2012 - Peace

PSA:  This is a looong post.  It is written mostly for me.  A sort of refresh.  A reminder of the past year and what it has taught me and what I hope 2012 will bring me and my family.  I want it recorded for memory keeping purposes.  I completely understand if you skip over it and go and look at all of the pretty scrapbook projects out there! Thanks for stopping by and I hope you have a safe and happy evening ringing in the New Year.

 

I know it has been said a million times before - but where did this year go?  It honestly feels like yesterday that I sat down to start my Project Life for 2011, researching plans for our annual vacation, and feeling the excitement and possibility of what the year ahead will bring.

Fast forward 365 days and I sit here today with many of the same goals, although I feel a bit more realistic in the implementation of a few of them. 2011 brought much turmoil, sadness, and a great loss to our lives.  I feel like time and time again I felt like I had everything under control and then something else came along that I totally had no control of.  On the scrapbooking front it was certainly not a very good year.  I spent most of the year admiring blogs and projects from afar, dreaming of the "good ole" days when I had creative time. Call me an optimist, but I do believe that my time will return.  With two teenagers who are pretty much independent now, carving out a few minutes a day should not be a problem.  Perhaps more of a problem this year was the "want" to carve out creative time. My creative mood never seemed to match my creative spare time.

I will look back on 2011 as a year that was filled with so much. Our backyard renovation, starting on my track to fitness and health, the strengthening of friendship bonds and the drifting apart of other friendships. Our vacation to Blue Mountain and New York City were the travel highlights but of course everything gas been shadowed by the dark cloud of losing my father in law to a terrible disease and the ever mounting worry of my moms health and the responsibility that brings.  I hope that one day the sadness will not be as heavy as it feels as I write this.  In my wildest dreams I would have never have guessed that 2011 would have given us what it did. On reflection perhaps it is why I enter 2012 with trepidation as I have learned this year that the best laid plans go awry and ultimately we have no control over tomorrow.

Over the last few weeks (or even months) I have been thinking about a word that I want for 2012.  With my 2011 word being "Achieve" I feel like I did make progress in some areas I wanted.  I "achieved" my goal of getting healthy - but let me add here - I didn't KEEP the health.  The last few months have been so chaotic if I have 10 minutes to stop at the drive through for dinner I felt thankful.  More and more pounds have found there way back to me and although I'm not OK with it, I have accepted that I can only handle so much. My journey of wellness doing boot camp 3 days a week seems like a far away life now.. I'll discuss more on that later.  I did "achieve" some organizing I wanted to complete.  More along the lines of my mindset has changed for what really needs organizing and what is important.  My 422 bottles of mists do not need to be colour co - ordinated by height in my scraproom, but a file folder of important papers, insurance and contacts do, in case something were to happen.  Nothing good ever comes from losing someone so important in your life, but I certainly can admit to reevaluating some things in my life, and for that I am thankful. Looking back on my OLW for 2011 I can say it wasn't a total failure but it also wasn't the impact that I wanted it to have on my life.

And now with less than 8 hours to go until 2011 finds its way into our past I feel excited, nervous, optimistic and more than anything hopeful.  With 2011 bringing a skyrocketing pace of life, I am optimistic for a slower pace but not expectant one anytime soon.  I have learned in 2011 that you can not control everything that life brings you, but you can control how you handle and react to life.... and that brings me to my 2012 word...

 

It does not mean to be in a place
where there is no noise trouble or hard work,

It means to be in the midst of those things
and still be CALM IN YOUR HEART. 

 

PEACE |pēs| noun1

• freedom from disturbance; quiet and tranquility • mental calm; serenity
• Peace is not something you wish for. It is something you make. Something you do, something you are and something you give away.
• Peace comes from within, do not seek it without.  
• Set peace of mind as your highest goal and organise your life around it. 

 

Many of you I am sure have chosen this word for this year or in years past and I have never really understood it like I have recently.  Perhaps I mistook Peace to mean boring, or quiet, but I think it isn't until we really want something that the true meaning comes to light. I want to feel calm again, to be happy with everyday.  To rid myself of the panic that everything has to be perfect, the house has to be "drop in" clean and I must be doing something creative every single spare moment I have.  To be patient with my health and to learn that it is a slow process and that getting my health back is the biggest single thing I can give myself towards a more peaceful life with less worrying and less stress. Life throws us curve balls, but it is indeed no need to put the rest of your life on hold until the problem goes away... cause well when its gone another one pops up to replace it. I need lazy days on the couch to rejuvenate, but not too many that I become a couch potato.  I need to rekindle my love of reading, and to revisit my creative side many more times a week - not necessarily scrapbooking but branching out to other areas as well.  I need to tie up all of the loose end and all of the unfinished projects.  I need to document more instead of trying to keep everything there is on my to do list and my wish list all in my head only to be forgotten a few days later (which has the opposite effect of peace).  Perhaps mediation is something I should investigate further or Yoga to embrace my spirituality on my mission to bring more peace.

I have no grand illusions that much will change in our environment this year, but I certainly have the highest of hopes that whatever comes my way - it will bring peace and joy to us all.

Happy New Year to you all... and may you all find peace in 2012.

Comments

[Tania S.]

Love your word choice for the year, I chose TIME, simply because it seems that it goes so fast and we lose track of how we spend it. Too much of my time in this lifetime has probably already passed me by and I'm hoping to pay more attention to it now, use it the way I want to and make sure that I don't let minutes pass me by without making some new memories. Happy New Year!

[Diane Payne]

Happy New Year...and I love your new blog look!

[April W]

Absolutely love this post Lori. I wish you all the best in the coming year. :)
- April