happy new year

Happy new year everyone!  Well, this year is definitely not starting the way we'd hoped. My youngest daughter is (hopefully) near the tail end of a bug that made her sick for several days, starting on Christmas, and she spiked a fever yesterday morning at 6am. Shortly after the clock struck midnight and 2014 began, my husband got ill and has been sick since. Today I'm trying to help them however I can while my older daughter and I are crossing our fingers that we do not get sick, too.

Needless to say, not what we were hoping to be doing today. Even though 2014 is off to an inauspicious start, I'm holding out hope for this year. 2013 wasn't a bad year, but it was a hard year. While I'm proud of starting my freelance career, working on this blog, and my family, I did not feel like myself for the majority of the year. I was (and still am) a bit homesick for my old house and for New York. I was (and still am) exhausted because my baby, at 14 months still does not sleep through the night. I'm hard on myself and onmy body, still a little heavier than I wanted to be by now. It's funny, I felt much more confident in who I was and how I looked and dressed when I was in high school and college than I do now. 

So that's what I'm hoping for this year: to find myself again. To--as much as I can with small children--do the things that make me happy, to make time for myself, to try and push myself out of my comfort zone, to get outside more, to find some energy again and to not always be so tired, to learn something new, to get a little more organized, to dress more like who I feel I am, and to accept that certain things are out of my hands and try to let them go.  

I'm not giving myself a deadline for these things, because I don't think the added pressure is necessary. These goals have been on my mind for a while, so I feel committed to them.

And that's what I wish for each of you, too: that you find what fulfills you, whether it's personally or professionally. Happy 2014!

image via santarosaredwhiteandboom.com

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