Happy New Year! I hope your holidays were wonderful! I spent it with my grown up kids laughing and eating entirely too much good food! I even got some new work done as gifts for my girls that I will share very soon.
Did you eat your black eyed peas on New Year’s? That is a very southern thing to do.. it’s one of the only practices I participate in to bring me luck in the new year. I make Hoppin John, it’s this yummy concoction of blacked eyed peas, rice, creole seasons, and ham bone. So yummy and my husband, who is not southern, asks me every year when I’m making it.. :-) Another tradition, though not for luck, is to have a prime rib on Christmas day AND New Year’s day. It’s my husband’s idea.. this is not so much for luck, just to ensure our arteries are sufficiently clogged in the New Year!
Did you make any New Year resolutions? I try not to make many and the ones I make aren’t very detailed.. I don’t want to fail right out the gate but I do enjoy looking at the New Year as a fresh start. This year I resolved to drink more water and get away from my sugary iced teas. I resolved to try a reduced gluten diet. Not gluten free but I’m hoping that reducing gluten in my diet will reduce some of the inflammation. I resolved to “get up, dress up, and show up” more in my life though I’m not exactly sure how that looks yet. And I resolved to try much much harder to use reusable bags for shopping. I really want to do that one!
Ok, so leading up to the New Year I spent a lot of time thinking about my “word”. I’m not sure if you are familiar with choosing a word to represent your year ahead. It has become very popular in the past few years. Many bloggers and artist do it. I think it is a wonderful practice and I adopted it last year as my New Year’s resolution of sorts. After thinking on it for several weeks at the end of 2013, the word that came to me in various ways was “Shine.” I wrote about it at the beginning of last year in a post. It was a very good fit for 2014. In many ways I did shine. I had a lot of wonderful things happen in my business that I think were examples of how I shined. Getting my work noticed in several, new to me, venues. I shined as an artist and a teacher and I’m pretty proud of how my year turned out.
So this year, having adopted the practice, I spent the last few weeks of 2014 watching for what word showed up in various places in my life, It’s amazing when you look and listen quietly, you see things appear around you. I thought for a while the word was going to be “trust.” That I would need to trust in the future of 2015 but at the very end of the year the word “Brave” called to me from every nook and cranny of my life and I just couldn’t walk past it. It forced its way through and won.
So, here I go Bravely into 2015.
I’m not just going to trust that things will fall into place in the future of 2015, I’m going to get up and put on my warrior makeup and bravely tackle all the new things (and some old) that come my way! So much I’m doing in my business right now is scary. I’m approaching things I have never faced before. Like getting into shows, teaching online, maybe approaching more galleries. Just putting me out there in general for what could be criticism or rejection by my art peers. I know this stuff probably won’t kill me. Lol! No, it won’t kill me at all but man it feels big and overwhelming and at times, impossible. But I really CAN do it!
So with that said, a few of my New Year resolutions for my business are to participate in some new shows and galleries, to do more tutorials here for you, to start doing some art videos to share, and to learn more techniques to better my products and to also share with you. Maybe my word should have been share :-)
I leave you with a little glimpse..
work in progress for an upcoming auction piece. More on the finished project soon and here’s to hoping that it gets lots of bids by someone who really wants it!
What’s your word this year?
