Happy New Year! Lets hope that 2023 continues to improve on the previous years. What a pleasure it is to be blogging another year with this fantastic group of bloggers. We have now been blogging at Share Six for 8 years.

The month crept up on us very quickly and it was my turn to pick the theme, so what was more appropriate than {New Beginnings}. I love the beginning of the year. It is a reset. I can look at what I see happening and evaluate what I need to do.

Each year I start out enthusiastically trying to loose weight. This year is no different. I lost some before we went to Macedonia, and then gained it when I came back. My work situation created a fair bit of stress and I, without doubt, am a stress eater. I am also a bored eater. However this year, most certainly for the first half of the year I am going to be eating a lot of lettuce. The reason for that is that we have potential plans to travel to Australia in May and I would like to be a lot thinner by then.

I have also decided that I am going to chill. I am going to work hard not to stress out. 2021 and 2022 were spent worrying about Richard and his health and then worrying about figuring out what I needed to learn for the additions to my job and making sure that I fully understood all of the intricacies of the multiple different tasks I was taking on. This year I am hoping that I can relax a bit more.

I am going to slow down, and cruise as much as I can. Richard is a go, go, go person and I just want to be much slower.

I am going to do my best to keep my head above water and take deep breathes when I need to.

I am going to do my best to not get my feathers ruffled. It takes a bit to get me ruffled but I really do not like it, so the goal is to avoid any form of ruffling.

I want to dance as though no one is looking…

And if I look foolish, oh well…

I am going to hang out with my loved ones, especially my baby boy, Luka. I hope to continue to show kindness and love wherever I can.

I am going to relax and take in the vitamin C. (Carefully though, as we all know Richard story of melanoma. Too much sun is not good for the skin).

I am going to attempt to get more sleep. Being a night owl that is really tough for me. I am awake at 1am and dragging at 8am. There is a up side to sleeping more and it has a lot to do with diet.

I am going to look to others for wisdom and guidance when I do not have the answers myself. But I am not going to be pulling my feathers out over things I cannot control. And if I see, someone struggling, I hope that I will always reach out with kindness.

I hope that I will be curious, but not where it affects others. I want to see as much as I can. Mr Lukie is now going to be going for more walks and outings. I am super excited about the plans for the trip to Australia. This is the homeland of my great grandparents and so I am eager to visit it.

I want to smile a lot more, enjoy the laughter and feel so much lighter in spirit. I hope that we lose some of the heaviness that we have been under the past two years

And when I can, I am going to do my best to have a flipping good time.

And maybe make a splash.

I am not one for resolutions. I know that I can never keep them, but I feel like I can manage these thoughts. New Beginnings are awesome. It means we can let go of the past mistakes, or sorrows or hardships. We can carry forward with us the goodness of life where we choose to.

New beginnings give us opportunities to learn something new that we may not have done before. One of the things I discovered I love is artwork with wood. For the last two years we have gone to an art studio for our work retreat and I hope we get to go again this year. I love the creative aspect of it.

At the end of each year I pull out a new puzzle and start to work on it. It helps to reset my mind, and to dig a little deeper to find those missing pieces. It makes me think again more logically. It helps me to get my mind off everything. When I have finished blogging now, I am heading back to my challenging puzzle.

I encourage you to look at what {New Beginnings} you can put into place in your life. Just make sure that they do not become a burden to you. Enjoy everything you can about 2023, and if life does get tough, try to find the positives within the negatives, those are what will get you through the challenging times. That, and family and really good friends.

This is a circle blog and as I mentioned, we have some very talented ladies in the group. The sneak peaks are stunning and I cannot wait to see the rest. Take some time to follow the links and see what they have for you this month. My incredibly talented friend Elizabeth of It’s Still Life by Elizabeth Willson is up next. I can’t wait to see what she has to share. You can see more of her work by clicking on her Instagram page. Definitely check out her incredible art.

Come and share your images to  Facebook and Instagram tagging #sharesix_newbeginnings.

You can also find me on Facebook, and Instagram.