Positive Vibes

We've made it another year.  It's January 4, 2013.  How many times have you written 2012?  I used to have a terrible time with the year when I taught and needed to write the date on the board every day.  I used to have to scribble out and initial every check I wrote for a month.  Those are no longer problems for me.  I no longer teach and I can't remember the last check I wrote.  How's that for a positive twist on what used to be a negative?

And that's what this blog is about today. Finding some positive in the midst of the gloom.  Yes, gloom.  There is great sadness in the universal world and in my personal sphere, too.  So, I am going to focus on the positive for the twenty-thirty minutes it takes me to write this. 

I saw a great idea on Facebook that I plan to do.  One takes a jar and fills it throughout the year with notes about the great things that happen.  Then, on New Year's Eve, one takes the papers out of the jar and reviews just how good a year 2013 really was.  So far, my jar is small and empty.  BUT, I know that the papers will come.  Until then, I can hunt for a bigger jar. 

I gained five pounds over the holiday season, setting me back on my weight loss goal and frustrating me concerning the trouble I have with inhaling sweets.  However, I have since lost two and I am back on the wagon  to losing the rest and more.  I am feeling hopeful about weight loss.  I have a good program to follow and I have the patience to know that it is going to take freakin' forever to get where I want to be.  It'll be slow because I know I will occasionally jump into the cookie, pie, and cake abyss.  And I will enjoy every illicit bite, sorta.

I love me some Facebook as you probably know.  It allowed me to reconnect with elementary school friends.  We hadn't seen each other in forty-five years when we met for lunch a couple years ago.  Every time I think about that meeting I smile.  I really love these women, and I can't believe how much we enjoy each other and how special our renewed friendship has become.  One has to marvel that whatever it was that made us friends as kids still exists all these years later.  Joyce, Joan, Patty, and Wendi - I'll see you this weekend!

On another note about Facebook, it is wonderful to know that I can hit an X and poof! posts from people who are still bitter about the results of the last presidential election are gone. LOL As Glinda the Good Witch said, You have no power here! Begone, before somebody drops a house on you, too!   I love my FB friends, but enough is enough.

Isn't it great to quote The Wizard of Oz in relation to your own life?  I think so, but then I have long loved this story.  It makes me fondly remember Nancy, my college roommate.  She loved this story, and she made me love it too.  She passed away this day four years ago.  She's up there smiling at my Oz reference and wondering if I'll be able to fit in a few more before this blog is finished.

I hope your 2013 is a happy year.  Fill a jar with your good experiences.  I'll bet it grounds you and helps you to refocus.  Life is often unfair and very disappointing.  But, there must be something good to it, or we wouldn't fight so hard to stay here. No matter how bad it gets, how sad we get, how scared we get, most of us fight to not give up and to find some good in this crazy life, no matter what.

Wizard of Oz: You are talking to a man who has laughed in the face of death, sneered at doom and chuckled at catastrophe. I was petrified.

LOL @ the Wizard.  I get it. Sometimes life is scary and bottomless sad.  But this human will endeavor to laugh, sneer, and chuckle throughout the year. As best I can.