A Fresh Start

As I started writing this first post of the New Year, I wanted to lead off with a quote pertaining to New Year's.  I was looking for something to inspire me as I wrote about all the new possibilities for the New Year.  I ended up laughing to myself as I was inspired by not one but many quotes, many of them humorous and poking fun at our attempts to reform our bad habits. 

Youth is when you're allowed to stay up late on New Year's Eve.  Middle age is when you're forced to.  ~Bill Vaughn

First, Happy New Year, Everyone!  Here is to new friends, endless possibilities, and a fresh start.  How did you spend your New Year's Eve?  Alone in the quiet, with cheerful friends, in a merry crowd of strangers, in the cold winter night watching a ball drop...I did not ring in the New Year, I snored it in.  I was sound asleep by 11:30.  I tried, I really did, to watch the ball drop in NYC on TV, but I just couldn't stay awake.  I was yawning frequently by 10:00 pm and my eyelids were starting to droop.  My husband warned me that I wasn't going to stay awake.  I kept telling him he was mistaken.  He just shook his head and kept his comments to himself after that.  I made the mistake of climbing into my nice warm cozy bed to watch the ball drop.  I dropped off-into sleep that is.

We had made last minute plans to have friends over on New Year's Eve.  Our whole family has been ill over Christmas break with bad colds.  We were all over the worst of it and no longer contagious by New Year's Eve.  My husband made the calls the day before New Year's Eve to see if our friends were up for a "Lame New Years Party" as my husband was describing it (and not quite in those words).  All of our friends have toddlers and infants (all under 6 months of age).  We were a weary ragtag group of parents.  Everyone left by 10 pm to go home to put the kids in bed.  We were all lamenting how things have changed. There were comments on how we were going to have to set our alarm clocks at home to make sure we didn't miss the last minute countdown so that we could join millions of other people in welcoming in the New Year.  

The bottle of Korbel that our friend put in the freezer to chill was forgotten.  It just got taken out of the freezer today along with the bottle of sparkling grape juice.  A perfectly good bottle of champagne down the drain.  It also leaked all over the ice box so we had to dispose of all the ice and clean out the ice box.

 Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right.  ~Oprah Winfrey

Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let each new year find you a better man.  ~Benjamin Franklin

I thought for weeks about what my New Year's resolution would be this year.  A new year promises a fresh start just as Mondays promise a new week.  All of our transgressions of the previous year are behind us and endless days of possibilities lie before us.  How will we greet the first of these days? 


I have failed for year's to become more punctual and to stop procrastinating.   I have kept my New Year's resolutions of previous years in regards to finances and being more "green".  We are more frugal and not as wasteful with our spending.  We recycle religiously.  Some weeks, we have more recycling than garbage (of course I should mention that our recycling is picked up every other week).  I had also been pretty good about eating healthier and exercising (I just haven't gotten back on track since giving birth six months ago).  It seems resolutions dealing with character traits are the most difficult to keep.  


I think Oprah and Benjamin Franklin got it right.  We should always be striving to improve ourselves.  The fresh start to a new year should be used as a chance to reflect and honestly assess ourselves and who we are.  We should strive to better ourselves so we can be better neighbors, friends, spouses...

New Year's Day:  Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions.  Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.  ~Mark Twain

Yesterday, everybody smoked his last cigar, took his last drink and swore his last oath.  Today, we are a pious and exemplary community.  Thirty days from now, we shall have cast our reformation to the winds and gone to cutting our ancient shortcomings considerably shorter than ever.  ~Mark Twain

Good resolutions are simply checks that men draw on a bank where they have no account.  ~Oscar Wilde

It's all about good intentions.  An attempt to be successful is still an attempt even if we are not successful.  Tomorrow we can start all over again.




Quotes from Quote Garden.