so this is the new year...

Happy New Years!! (she says as she high fives herself and continues marathon-ing it through Downton Abbey season one).  Due to an unfortunate timing of a silly procedure, Miss Rhiain, aka me, is at home alone on New Year’s eve.  As I cannot be around people I am going to talk my mouth off to all you online folk about new years and resolutions and making years count.

Last year, just prior to the turn of 2012, one of my close friends invited me around for an afternoon of lavish kindness together with another close friend.  With food and wine we sat around and chatted until a home visiting beautician showed up and surprised us with delicious facial treatments.  It was divine.  After the facial we returned to my friend’s lounge where she had laid out blank canvases for each of us surrounded by stacks of magazines and other “scrapbooking” materials.  “We’re making dream boards” she said.  I know, the words scrapbooking and dream boards kind of make my skin crawl a little too, they’re just sort of naff words.  But in all honesty it has been one of the best things I have done leading into a new year.  Beats the crap out of any new year’s resolutions I have tried to make and inevitably never stuck to, or any other sort of evaluation mechanism I have tried to implement.

I always spend either side of the cusp of the year panicking basically.  Worried I have wasted it, and fretful over how to make the next one count and I know I am not alone in this sort of behaviour.  So like most I have spent years making lists and resolutions and instead of said lists and resolutions providing me with freedom and inspiration and resolve, I have more or less felt like I am just putting off the inevitable disappointment that I will be to myself, as I know I will fail.  Like I have a brick in my hand and I’m falling to the bottom of the ocean.  Yes, I am nothing if not dramatic.  So I know not how to express how magical it was to spend a crafty afternoon with two of my favourite ladies, finding pictures and pretty images and statements and words that created my dream year for 2012 in the form of a collage.  We spent quite a few hours cutting and pasting and thinking about what actually we wanted from the year to be and then we walked each other through our dreams.

The exciting thing now is that pretty much everything on my board has happened.  Well, that’s hard to say really, as a lot of the things are progressive in nature, so the end result should not have occurred yet anyway, but the bulk of things represented by the imagery on my board, well, it has at least begun.  I had some simple things on there, like growing my hair.  Who knew you had to look after your hair to grow it right?  I didn’t.  But now I do.  And I’ve grown the crap outta my hair this year. And I love it (I’ve wanted long hair ever since I went to Scandinavia where the guys are beautiful but the girls even better). The rest on the board, not so simple.  Like one of my goals was to let go of the idea that I am unmemorable.  I’ve had that belief for most of my life and it has only been compounded by the fact that I am constantly encountering people who cannot seem to remember my name, let alone my face.  But I’ve learnt that this says very little about me and more about them.  See, I am a name person.  98% of the time I will remember someone’s name and face, even if I have only met them once.  It’s just a thing I can do.  Others can’t.  So this year I let that belief go.  That was much harder than growing my hair.  But I can actually say I did it.  It was on my board, and it is now done. 

Probably the biggest chunk of my board dedicated to one thing was covered in music related imagery, and boy did I chase that this year.  It’s exciting to think that within one year I have recorded and released an EP, had my song played on national radio, and shot a music video together with a bunch of other very cool things.  Its totes cray cray.  Kind of unbelievable, for me anyway.   It been hard work, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy it.  I’m still just an unknown, just a girl pursuing a career in music, but hey, that’s hells as better than where I was a year ago.

Other things I’ve managed to do that were weaved into the imagery on my board is travel (Bali & Thailand), put myself out there in terms of boys and romance and whatnot and also wear togs without boardshorts (because let’s be honest ladies, it just looks better).  So yes, I think it has been a successful year and it is so nice to be able to look at the canvas that I plastered only but a year ago and see that I really did what I wanted. 

I don’t think I am going to return to resolutions.  Whilst I haven’t made another board this year (yet) I am going to figure out a way to creatively highlight my hopes for 2013.  I think the difference is, instead of resolving to go to the gym three times a week from now on, or something of the sort, I’ve decided it’s better to say saying something like, I will pursue health this year.  Give yourself room to grow into it I reckon, otherwise you always feel like too much of a failure to continue trying.  That’s what I’ve noticed anyways.

So yeah. This is the new year.  And I’m excited.

(this was my dream board for 2012)