Better Than Last Year

      One of the wrestling coaches at our school has a sign on his door that reads "Today Your Job is to Be Better Than You Were Yesterday." I love that quote. I would love to live that quote. Ah but then, life happens.

      During December and January I took what I would consider a writer's sabbatical. A little break was necessary to clear my head, readjust, regroup and just relax. The last few months got a wee bit out of hand. I was working too much, breaking too little and the inevitable burn out ensued. So I took some time off to establish a new direction, take a hard look at some life goals and reinvent the bucket list. Well, to be honest I didn't actually get that far yet but alas, like myself, it is a work in progress.

      Last year I set a goal to pay back the kindness of my parents through what else, weekly acts of kindness. I learned a great deal through my pay it forward deeds but probably the biggest thing was that I still have a long way to go in my quest to be a more useful human being and if I am to achieve that objective in this lifetime I will have to live yet another hundred years or more, maybe two. So for the remaining eleven months of 2014, I have decided it is time to continue my little endeavor and to carry on my quest for personal development by focusing on my problems less and on the good more. I want to be able to see the world and people through God's eyes because my view is often times faulty, cloudy and way too distorted. So I will continue to write. Not for glory, or riches but in the hope that one day when I reach the end of this particular journey, I might have inadvertently learned something.

      The faults, wrongs and injustices of this world could be readily argued but if one takes the time to look, mixed in among them like little jewels blinking in the sun, are so many blessings, gifts, objects of beauty, and moments of joy. What we choose to focus on makes all the difference! Do we take the easy, wide, down hill road and focus on the negative or do we choose every single day to look at life not through rose colored glasses but through the lens of light. Nobody, anywhere that I have ever found, can deliver on that "rose garden," that Lynn Anderson sang about in 1970, (dating myself on that one) so perhaps it is time to stop complaining that roses have thorns and begin thanking the powers that be that those thorns still have roses. No matter what, we always have the gift of choice at least as far as what goes on in our own hearts and minds. It is all a matter of focus. This year, I choose to focus on the good, the inspiring, the beautiful and the joyful. This year my job is to be better than last year!

      Here's to a wonderful 2014!

      Laurie