A New Year

Can it be that it's 2010 already?? Time has flown so fast, don't you think? I still think of the 90s as "a few years ago" when in reality there are now pop stars selling multi-platinum albums who were born in that decade!!!

I remember how I was feeling on this very day a year ago. Not very good. I'd felt 2008 had been a very blah year and that somehow I hadn't grown or bettered myself during those 12 months.

This time around, I should confess I had been apprehending the coming of this end of this year because quite frankly it feels somewhat contradictory.

In 2009 I lost one of the most important persons in my life and me and my loved ones lived through one of the most difficult moments of our lives together. I lost my enthusiasm, creativity and joy for blogging.

And yet, for some strange reason, 2009 feels like one of the best years I've had in a while.

The only explanation I can think of is because, despite all of the above, I feel that in 2009 I took major steps in the direction of becoming the person I think I want to be.

Did I keep all my NYs resolutions. No. Did I fail at them? I guess 2 out of 4 is not that bad a score. Still, I feel that both professionally and personally I won some major battles in 09. Somewhere along the way, I realized that my priorities were a bit off and managed to shift them around mid year.

Professionally speaking, I stopped whining and sighing about the circumstances I'd been "trapped in" and decided it was time I stepped up to bat. In turn I concluded several projects, one of them particularly difficult, strategic and quite sensitive for our department and, forgive me for gloating, but I did damn well. So much so, that by the end of the year I'd been handed over 3 more similar projects and managed to get the attention of different people in our organization. I'm not out for corporate glory, please don't get me wrong... but I do feel mighty proud that I've been able to prove that being a "little person" in our organization still means you can do "great things" if given the opportunity, the trust and the means. I think that was a lesson that some of our big bosses had forgotten and I feel really good I got to be a part of it.

Personally speaking, I feel like I reached the top of several personal Everests. In great part, most of this is due to finally leading a healthier lifestyle. Working out on a consistent basis really helped me in more ways than simply loosing weight and feeling great. By learning how to listen to my body I discovered my own limits and progressively how to surpass them. By constantly finding new ways to deflect boredom, frustration or simple laziness I learned how to stick to my goals. By not giving up when the results didn't turn out to be as I expected or came as fast as I was hoping they would, I learned the virtues of patience, of taking a few steps back and looking at the bigger picture, of shrugging my shoulders and thinking "oh well.. it's ok, it'll come" (and most of the times, it did). By constantly raising the challenges (greater speed, more time, longer distance, bigger race...) I impressed my own self and learned all that I am capable of doing which months before I wouldn't have thought possible.

I crossed into the 3rd decade of my life in '09, and I still remember JJ's comment on my blog saying how even though I may not feel it soon after, my 30s would turn out to feel better than my 20s.... I think she was right.

At least that's how these past 4 months have been feeling so far and how I'm hoping 2010 will feel like in a year's time.

I hope you all had a wonderful New Year's Eve and that y'all are starting 2010 with us much enthusiasm, optimism and joy as I know I am. May the New Year bring us all the great, simple things that truly make us happy: good health, loving memories, great love, true friends, sens of worth and above all, inner peace.


xoxo's
Fned.