Happy New Year! I hope you're feeling refreshed, renewed, and hopeful for 2014.
We had a lovely Christmas in Gig Harbor at my parents' house. They recently returned from a well-deserved 40th anniversary trip to Italy, so in honor of, we cooked an Italian vegetarian feast with fresh homemade pasta (my first time!), two kinds of bruschetta, pecorino roasted pepper rolls, zucchini parmesan, Prosecco, and souffle al cioccolato for dessert.
My niece, Ayana, was in noodle heaven. She's 1.5 now, and is the life of the party. I love when she screams "SHANNON!" at the top of her lungs and crashes into my arms. It's the best feeling in the world. For Christmas, I got her a pair of cute toddler sushi booties. She wore them for about a minute.
Hal and I had a nice mellow New Year's Eve. We stayed in, made a most delicious veggie pesto lasagna, watched The NeverEnding Story until countdown and popped a bottle of bubbly we'd been saving for a special occasion.
2013 was rough. They say your first year of marriage is the hardest, and it was. But not for the usual reasons. I experienced the loss of my little Bailey, my grandmother, and something I didn't talk about on the blog, a miscarriage. All within a time span of two months.
But with loss, comes growth. I've done more soul searching, journaling, self-help reading and meditation this year than ever before. I feel a much stronger connection to my higher self, trusting and relying more on my intuition for answers. It seems as though the aforementioned events needed to happen in order to prepare me for a new direction. And then reiki came along and blew me away. It felt like a giant gift from the universe.. the ability to heal myself physically and emotionally from the pain of the past few months.
So yes. I'm really looking forward to what 2014 will bring. This year, I have one large umbrella goal under which everything else lies...
{AUTHENTICITY}
To be true to myself and start living the life I was meant to live. To actively participate, instead of watching from the sidelines. To push forward and eliminate the things that are no longer serving me. With more creativity. More art and music. More cooking, travel and adventure. And a whole lot more self-love.
Under that umbrella, are a few specific career goals...
- Submit the children's book series I've been writing to agents and publishers
- Open an Etsy side business for my artwork
- Record more demos for an upcoming acoustic ukulele album
- Create a reiki self-healing e-course for creatives
- Write an e-book for the blog
A few continuing lifestyle goals...
- Meditate nightly
- Let go of anger and worry
- Tell my husband how much I appreciate him more often
- Treat myself to massages more often!
And one very special personal wish...
- Make and keep, with the help of my love and a higher power, a tiny healthy human being.
Cheers friends! *clinking flutes* What are your hopes and dreams for the new year?
P.S. Thank you SO much for the love and support last week. Your comments, Facebook posts and emails inspire me to continuing pushing forward with music. I hope to record a few more songs for you throughout the coming year. If you emailed me and didn't yet get your MP3, please let me know!
