I love Christmas. Not the shopping and craziness and relentless stupid commercials on TV. I love Christmas--the glowing, twinkly lights, the sparkly decorations, the smells of baking and bright paper and bows and the generally better dressed, more decorative world we seem to walk through during late December. The days sort of glow somehow as we try to adorn and festoon our way out of the dark season. I think I love it so much because somehow in my mind it is still the Victorian fantasy I came to believe in from watching Little Women and A Christmas Carol, White Christmas and Holiday Inn and reading The Bird's Christmas Carol (my favorite Christmas book when I was young). I love how Christmas brings beauty and sparkle to my everyday world.
Still, even during these glowing, Victorian tinged days, I'm already feeling the pull of the new year--looking ahead, thinking of what I want to do, what I'm going to do differently, what exciting things might just be waiting up ahead.
I do think it's going to be a fabulous year. I already know what my focus word will be--Believe. Do you have a focus word for the year? I like having a focus and intention for the year rather than setting resolutions. Focus is more flexible and seems better suited to something meant to last a full year.  This year I had three focus words--create, thrive, explore. This led me a good way down my path, but I think my focus was a bit split, which is why I chose one word for 2011. That and I feel for the coming year everything I want will come if I just learn to believe in myself and my abilities.
I already have a few things coming into my life that I can tell are going to help me keep growing and thriving next year.
- This week, I got two early Christmas gifts in the mail (one just arrived). The first, Inner Excavation by Liz Lamoreux, is already bringing shifts in my world view just from the first read through. The second, the one that came today, is Expressive Photography from the Shutter Sisters, edited by Tracey Clark, and it feels like I'm holding in my hands everything I want to learn to bring out in my own art and life. I'm feeling madly in love with these books, so I've been writing about them all week, and I'm not done yet. Look for lots of posts both here and at my WordColors blog about these books over the coming weeks and months.
- Preparations for the Wild Minds Writing Retreat I'll be hosting in June. There will be more about this very soon, but it is already sending me in new thought directions as I plan it. It's going to be so much fun! I can't wait to have enough together to start sharing about it.
- The decision I've made that 2011 will be the year I create the physical self and surroundings that I so deeply desire and deserve. I've formed an art journaling group, BodyPages, to help in this exploration, and I'm starting to have actual ideas of how to make it happen and some hope that it actually can.
This is what's on my mind now. I'm enjoying the season and looking forward to the turn of the calendar page with great excitement and hope. Wishing you lots of both during this beautiful season!
