Hello New Year, Nice to Meet You...

2014, you have started off so well!

For some reason, I've had the biggest sense of optimism and hope for 2014.  This is not like me.  Usually, a year is just another year, a man-made way of marking time.  They generally go by without too much attention from me.  I don't think in terms of such long spaces of time...I get from day to day, hour to hour, minute to minute...years encompass too much for my tiny brain to comprehend.

The thought of 2014 has been different for me.  Maybe because of all the changes 2013 held, who knows...  But I've gotten the strangest feeling that this year is going to be epic...that HUGE positive things are going to happen.  What those things are, how they're going to come about, I have no clue...I just know I feel this optimism so strongly that it's a little eerie.  I joked at work on Monday that either good things were going to happen or I was going to get hit by a bus on the way home...because irony and morbid humor is how I roll...and since I didn't get hit by a bus so far, I guess we'll see how it all pans out...

I do know that it's already started off pretty well...so one day down, three hundred and sixty-four to go.  I got my Morning Pages (these are a suggestion from The Sound of Paper by Julia Cameron) done first thing this morning.  A friend I met through KIOS blog-a-thon (Hi Kara!) mentioned a 30 day challenge she was participating in called Root: A 30 Day Journal Project (which you can learn more about HERE), and I jumped on the bandwagon.  As far as I can tell from Day 1, it seems like more of a writing project.  Which is totally cool with me, because the thought of doing Morning Pages on days when nothing particular is going on makes me think Morning Pages will become tedious...and then I will quit doing them.  So I figure for January I'll have the Root prompts to get me into Morning Pages and then I'll have developed the habit of writing again and will figure it out for myself...or at least will have till February to find more prompts.  I used the Root prompts today and got my Morning Pages done pretty quickly and probably could have kept going.

Today was also the first day of the Documented Life Project (you can read more about DL HERE), which I have been waiting ever so impatiently for.  I jumped on the ball and did the first of the weekly challenges today...I told you I was impatiently waiting!

The first DL challenge is "photograph, sketch, paint, or incorporate your front door".

I cheated a little bit.  I did take a picture of my door, but technically my house doesn't have a front door...both outside doors are on the sides of the house...so I just took a picture the door I use.  Here it is in all it's dirty, anti-climactic glory:

This picture made me realize I need to clean...I'll wait for a warmer day...  (that day is probably called never, but theoretically  it does seem like something to keep in mind for spring...)

I cheated a little bit more when it came to putting the prompt to use in my DL book, because of what the blurb underneath the main prompt (on the website I linked above) said:

"Through the artistic medium of your choice, show us a bit of where you live in the symbol of your door, entryway or porch.  Think a bit about how you can use your door to express your personality, your life, what you value."

And when I thought about it in those terms, I realized that my actual front door didn't symbolize anything about me...other than my lack of desire to clean.  So I started thinking about it in terms of what a front door as a symbol meant to me, which led me to think about a home, and what a home symbolizes to me.  And here's what I came up with:

The first spread in my Documented Life book...YAY!

In the end, the front door (although not MY front door...egads, that might be a little more telling than I realized at first...some kind of psychological slip...well that'll be over-analyzed later...) was a warm and welcoming thing...a symbol of the place where I belong.

"A place where I belong"

I added all these little bits (most of them from care packages sent by dear artistic friends) to the page today, and they  fit in quite nicely with the idea the prompt brought about.  The sticker in the top right corner says 'Create a life you love.'  and I thought that was a fitting sentiment for starting off the new year...  I also love the sticker on the bottom that says 'homemade', because it is in a homemade (ok, home-altered) journal, with the door on the page (symbolizing home), and in connection with creating a life you love, I read it as Home. Made...meaning that 'place where I belong' is something I have to put forth effort to find or make if I can't find what I'm looking for...

Andy (my husband) and I went to IHOP for dinner tonight, which was a nice surprise...we rarely go out to eat (drive-thru happens a lot, but sit down eating not so much), we even more rarely go to IHOP, and in the few instances where we do eat in the restaurant, we usually end up talking about it for weeks before it actually happens.  (We're weird...)  But today, Andy surprised me, and that was really awesome!  It may not seem like much, but after ten years of being married, silly things that don't usually happen somehow become bigger and more special.  Andy is a creature of habit more than anyone else I've ever met, so for him to be spontaneous...it was a big thing.  

On the way home, we stopped at Walmart, which I usually hate beyond hate, but I got myself some new Washi tape (8 rolls!  WooHoo!  It was on clearance...she said by way of justification...).  The purchase of said Washi, combined with Walmart not being jammed with people (for once!) made this particular trip...not horrible!  It also made me wonder if they have Walmart in other countries...I'm sure they do, but I wonder if they are the same as Walmart is here...and do people in other countries hate Walmart as much as I do?  Any thoughts on this are appreciated...

And then we came home and I started writing this, the first blog post of 2014!  So all in all, the new year has been pretty positive so far...maybe my completely irrational optimism isn't misplaced after all...

What about you?  Did you do anything special today?  Do you have your own irrational feelings about what 2014 is going to be like?  Or is it just another day and another year?  Do you hate Walmart too?  (If you don't hate Walmart, please explain why in detail...I need to be convinced...and it would take A LOT to convince me...)  Any fun new purchases you naughty things?