image property of Mona Andrei

Welcome to the New Year, 2017!

This post recently appeared on Mona Andrei’s personal blog, Moxie-Dude. Life updates gone wrong. Or right. She’s undecided. Mona shares her thoughts on things that she finds silly, funny, or that simply deserve to be written about.

2017. Wow. I remember – many years ago – doing the math to figure out how old I’d be for the new millennium. At the time and according to my calculations, I would be 35 in the year 2000. It seemed so … space-age to me. Like The Jetsons, I imagined that by the time we reached the new millennium, we’d all be living in houses in the sky. And me, 35? Whoa! That was like OLD.

Now here we are, 17 years AFTER the new millennium. Where does the time go?

But really, time is relative, isn’t it? I mean, we can either get melancholy about “lost time” and wish we could recapture the past, OR we can live “in the moment” through the simple practice of self-awareness and create memories.

Self-awareness sounds a little woo-woo but I don’t mean it in that way.

It’s the Little Things

Think …

Warm toast smothered in real butter.

Looking up into a night sky and realizing that you’re being stalked by tiny stars, happily twinkling at you. Or possibly laughing at you.

Sinking into a hot, soothing bath after a long day.

The simple pleasures. For me this very moment is about the smell of freshly ground coffee beans, my fingers on the keyboard, and the pink sky rising over a snowy horizon.

Enough about me. How have you been? Do you have big plans for this year? Are you still a little in shock over the events of last year? Did you commit to any New Year’s Resolutions?

New Year, New You?

I must confess, I don’t buy into the whole “new year, new me” thing.

Every day is an opportunity to screw up. Or get it right. Whichever comes first. No worries though. They’re both good. You laugh at yourself, you learn, and you go on. It’s the passage of getting yourself together.

But I will say this: So far this new year has been SUPER BUSY for me. I have enough writing contracts to buy myself a box of Kraft Dinner (on sale) AND there’s even an interview where I’m the one answering the questions. (As a writer, I’m usually the one asking the questions.)

I’m kidding about the KD thing, but the interview is real. You can check it out later. I’ll put a link at the bottom of this post.

Meanwhile, here’s how this interview happened …

About a week ago I was sitting with my laptop, writing (what else?), when I received an email saying that my interview would go live on January 3^rd.

My first reaction was, “What?!! What interview?”

So I checked out the link and sure enough there were pictures and descriptions of my blog and me. (My blog and I … except that this is a casual conversation with y’all.)

As I read through the interview, which is a short Q&A, I realized that the answers sounded like me but I couldn’t remember answering them. This scared me. Part of me was screaming YOU HAVE ALZHEIMER’S while another part of me was screaming YOU WERE PROBABLY DRINKING. I’m not sure which part was screaming the loudest but they were both deafening so to get them to stop, I just agreed. YOU’RE BOTH RIGHT. I HAVE ALZHEIMER’S AND I WAS DRINKING.

The good thing about this interview is that by reading through it I got a chance to learn a little about myself; especially with my answer to the question:

What is the most important thing in life?

Where I answer:

The order goes like this: God >>wifi>>Family>>Business.

When I first read that I was like, “What? Putting wifi before family??? WHO ARE YOU?”

And suddenly my memory kicked in or my Alzheimer’s kicked off or I blamed a cheap bottle of wine and everything came together.

I DID DO THIS INTERVIEW and I remember exactly what my mind was trying to say at the time only I forgot to elaborate on it.

I’m not religious but I do consider myself spiritual. (I’m pretty sure that the words “spiritual” and “spirits” are similar on purpose – according to my wine-loving side.) While we’re all unique, I believe that on some fundamental level we’re all connected. You. Me. My kids. The trees. Puppies. Homeless people. And we’re all connected by an undefined energy source.

That said, both my kids AND my parents are independent and don’t need me as much as they used to. Much of the time, wifi is my best way of reaching them. Facetime. Email. Skype. Without wifi, I would only get to connect with my family once every whatever because everyone is so busy. There’s school, work, travelling … even laundry knows how to elbow its way to the top of our priority lists.

THANK GOD for wifi.

Even though wifi wasn’t technically invented by God, in a way it was since we’re all connected. To each other and to the powers that be – whatever you want to call it. Some call it Spirit. Others call it Wine.

I’m not sure if that made sense to y’all and I think I just got a new appreciation for the people who wrote the bible because this explaining spirituality stuff is HARD. Although I’m not certain that the bible falls under spirituality since technically it’s religious. But they do serve wine in churches, I’ve heard so … *shrugs shoulders*

Okay now I’m rambling like those TV evangelists: “You can WALK!”

Never mind. I can’t make you walk. But I can give you something to read.

Click here for that interview I mentioned. And feel free to share, post a comment, ask a question, send me over a coffee cheers (or wine cheers, depending on where you’re at in your day.

Oh and most importantly, Happy New Year! May you fill this year with 525,600 moments of treasured memories.

PS. I didn’t pull that number out of my calculator. It’s how many minutes there are in a year. (I looked it up.)