new year musings

New Year 

Happy New Year to everyone! I hope your celebrations have been fun and amid the revelry some time to unwind and relax? I wish you all much happiness and success in 2012, but perhaps most of all balance and wellbeing - that is most of all what I am seeking.

 Whilst I begin to plan and dream for the year ahead, garnering close all the encouragements and joy of last year to give me confidence, I am taking a little time out of each day to write a line or two about some small detail of the day. Partly because I have so enjoyed the more relaxed attitude I took about Christmas this year, the relishing of little moments and refusing that silly frantic edge that can creep in, I am hoping that this discipline will make me slow down a little and look closer at the beauty that is all about - to keep the frantic at bay! I am joining the other writing folk here, each of us making a "small stone" to mark a moment in each day. Join in if it sounds like it might be up your boulevard! I am also going to join in with a weekly photo post each week here, to celebrate a significantly lovely moment in each week. It is all about celebrating the small as well as big, and feels absolutely right to me. I have plans to take Wild Acre to a more fulltime schedule this year, so these moments will be precious and nourishing I hope, little moments of calm and reflection in my busy life. I think in some way, as yet unclear to me, they may be linked to prayer, but let's see! I think the underlying dynamic of all this is gratitude, and I do know the more of that I experience, the happier I am.

So let's all sally forth into the new year, where the pages of the diary are still smooth and cold and full of promise!

My 'small stone' for 1st Jan:
A cup of smoky rose tea in one hand. A slice of warm, newly baked gingerbread, sticky, fragrant and sweet in the other. No dramatic heralding of the new year for me today, but a small, quiet moment of calm instead.