Happy New Year - Mostly cloudy and overcast with just a bit of blue sky peeking through here and there. Temperature of 28° with the wind chill, it feels like 18°. I drove up to Lake McKinley in a warm car to take HD's first of the month (also first of the year) photo. I was only out of the car a few minutes and about froze! Of course, as Bud said, I wasn't dressed for the weather. Mr. Iron Man (aka Hubby Dearest) walked almost four miles in a bit more than one hour.
As has been my practice for many years, I do not make any New Year's resolutions, but, reading some of my January 1st journal entries from years past, it is obvious I was always looking to improve myself.
January 1, 2000 was the big Y2K worry but the lights stayed on. The only problem at work was that the computer did not back up. Two weeks later I went to Des Moines to pick up my new car - Scilla - the sweet little manual 5-speed, '93 Ford Escort station wagon, with only 30,000 miles, that I had picked out, made the deal for and bought all by myself.
January 1, 2001 - I was keeping track of everything I ate and how many calories were in it. (That must have been when I weighed almost 200 lbs.) 😔
January 1, 2006 - I was once again promising myself I would journal every day! (Didn't happen.) Only three others entries in January and then nothing until December. My entry on January 3 was this quote: "Regrets are a waste of time. They are the past crippling you in the present." (Federico Fellini)
January 1, 2009 - I was still "going to make an effort to write ((journal) more". But I was exercising! We had joined the Y when we moved to Creston. I was walking one mile, biking five miles, doing multiple reps on all the weight machines, at least five days a week.
In August 2009 I began writing a blog which has almost entirely taken the place of journaling.
In August 2020 I repurposed my Dream Journal to a Quotes Journal. Following is a sampling of some of those quotes.
"We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." (Anais Nin)
"Nature always wears the colors of the spirit." (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
"The leaves of memory seem to make a mournful rustling in the dark." (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)
"These pictures of her, like everything else, are drenched in time." (Margaret Atwood in Cat's Eye)
"The who you are with others is not you. To be lonesome is to be who you most fully are." (Charles Frazier in Varina)
"The essential self is fixed well before the 13th birthday. It may be influenced by experiences but it is seldom changed." (P.D. James in her short story The Yo-yo)
"The grab bag nature of my mind." (Ivan Doig in Last Bus To Wisdom)
"Nature reserves some of her choice rewards for days when her mood may appear to be somber." (Rachel Carson)
"Of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt." (Oscar Wilde)
"A lifetime isn't long enough for the beauty of this world and the responsibilities of your life." (Mary Oliver)
"Those who dwell among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life." (Rachel Carson)
"Poetry begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a loneliness." (Robert Frost)
"The child I was is with me in the present hour. It will be with me in the grave." (Mary Oliver)
"Within you, there is a stillness and a sanctuary to which you can retreat at anytime and be yourself." (Hermann Hesse)
"Writing is that oddest of anomolies: an intimate letter to a stranger." (Pico Iyer)
"True solitude is found in the wild places, where one is without human obligation." (Wendell Berry)
"To love someone deeply gives you strength. Being loved by someone gives you courage." (Lao Tzu)
Lastly, as the first day of January winds down:
"And now let us believe in a long year that is given to us, new, untouched, full of things that have never been." (Rainer Maria Rilke) 💖
