New Year

I've not blogged in ages.

Sometimes I'm just out of words - or maybe struggling to formulate them - or not sure what I want to share, or how much. Asia always accuses me of living my life really un-privately, on Facebook and with my blog... but there are plenty of things I hold onto, until the time is right.

So perhaps I'm just in a more private space lately.

Needing more time to process and work through my thoughts in a different way.

But today, the first day of the new year that I have any quiet and space to actually write (yay for husbands back to work and kids back to school!) I want to document. And share.

I've done a lot of crazy things over the years, inspired by the new year.

Some have been wildly successful, and others, not so much.

So I always approach a new year carefully, asking myself what it is I'd like to accomplish. How I'd like to change. What I might want to tackle.

And this year, I read a quote on Pinterest that caught my eye:

It all seemed good and sort of trite until I got to the last line.

Because I'm not a very surprising person.

I find safety and comfort and security and identity in being steady, constant and predictable.

I'm not a risk taker.

But packaged up in the idea of 'surprise', somehow risk taking becomes strangely appealing to me.

I've done some out-of-character types of things, here and there... I ran a half marathon. Applied for a high-level corporate job. I go to Africa (even in the midst of an ebola crisis!)

But my M.O. is safety.

So I'm hoping, this year, to do one thing a month that surprises myself. That takes me a little out of my comfort zone and expands my tight little definition of safe and secure. That, maybe, even terrifies me.

I'll be honest, I need ideas. There are a lot of things I've written off over the years - for so long, really, that they're just not on my radar at all. So if you've got any suggestions, hop in and share them.

I think, just maybe, that I'm going to start with snow skiing.

I've never ever gone. It scares the crap out of me.

It would definitely surprise me to try that.

And so begins a year of surprises.

2015.