Jumping off personal cliffs into the new year

Tomorrow is the last day of 2012. One year filled with life soon to be of the past. A year where i got my first teaching job and learned that it is a job I love! The first year since 2009 that did not contain Kjetil going to Afghanistan, and the first summer together as a family since 2009. The first calender-year in which we have lived where we now live, and we love it! Life is good. Not perfect, but that would have been boring, wouldn't it?

I love being on the threshold of a new year, it is so full of hope and expectations. It is a perfect time to set new goals. And i do have a couple of those.

You can have anything you want if you want it desperately enough. You must want it with an inner exuberance that erupts through the skin and joins the energy that created the world.

(Sheila Graham) 

so how bad do you wish to reach your goals? My goal is that my wish to do something will be stronger that my fear of failing. That is what holds me back. But 2013 is the year where i mail at least two books to a publisher. It will be my personal jump off a cliff i have kept at a distance for a long time. Yes, i fear refusal, i fear that others will not want to get to know the people who live within my books, that they won't feel their joy or sorrows, or want for them  to continue life in somebody elses heads. I am not an amazing writer, but the world does need divercity. I am not best, but i do not need to be. And what is really being best? It does not have the same meaning for all. But we don't have to be the best. Only good enough. 
i love to express myself through writing, singing and music, but I am no mezzosoprano, I have no education within music. But I guess it is kind of therapeutical playing the guitar and singing. An inner joy that springs out when i get to express myself that way. At the same time, it is the personal part of it, that holds me back from sharing from others. I don't feel like jumping off a cliff and crushing into whatever lies beneath. But i think jumping off ones personal cliffs, is a necessity at times. One cannot move on without doing it, and this is what i am starting to understand. I read the following one morning, and it inspired me alot:
 En indre glede over å kunne uttrykke meg på denne måten. Samtidig er det akkurat det personlige i det jeg gjør, som holder meg tilbake fra å dele det med andre. Man ønsker ikke å hoppe utfor stup og kræsje i bakken. Men jeg tror det er nødvendig. Man kommer ikke videre uten å gjøre det, og det er det jeg har begynt å innse. Jeg leste følgende imorges, og det inspirerte veldig:

"The first time you think you'd like to do something a little different from the way you've always done it, you pick up a pebble. The first time you actually do it differently - whether you're delighted or disappointed in the results - you throw the pebble into the pond. The pebble sends out tiny, barely visible ripples of movement toward the center. No one else notices. But the person who threw the pebble does if she pays attention. One day, all those small but indelible moments of private courage will burst through. And both you and your world will have changed in an authentic moment. We become authentic the same way we become courageous. By doing it. Not by thinking about it." (Sarah Ban Breathnach) 

Because having goals is not enough, we need to sit down and plan how to reach them and when to have reached part of them. I wish, as probably many others, to loose some weight. But not because I feel fat, I don't mind my curves. But I wish to become healthier and stronger and gain more energy to live my life. And I know that I cannot achieve this without doing something. Thoughts are of no help in that departement! I have to make a plan, and I have to follow that plan. But that is important whatever goal I have. A wish and a thought is not enough, we have to sit down and do something as boring as plan. Through that we can colour our lives more brightly than we could imagine beforehand. 

So let us turn 2013 to the year where we do what we think and let our thoughts find life outside our minds and become something!

Have a great, fantastic and unexpected New Year!

Katinka