Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

2012 was one of the very best...and the very worst...years of my life. Incredible joy mixed with unspeakable grief. 365 days of happiness and pain and exhilaration and love and loss and triumph and failure.

For those reasons, and others, I'm not making resolutions this year. Instead, I'm working on a New Year's Manifesto (check out the details at Moonfrye here!)

No more unrealistic "resolutions" growing forgotten and dusty on a mental shelf, useless by Valentine's Day. No more wishful thinking about my jean size, my bank account, or my coffee consumption.

I just want to be healthy..and happy...and real.

And then, I think, the rest of it will just fall into place.

So far, the final hours of 2012 and the first day of 2013 have been perfect, spent laughing and enjoying the company of good friends. And tonight, we rang in the year right at GG's house with matzo ball soup from Nate 'n Al's...so far, so good!

Yesterday I started a running program which is designed to take me from the couch (who knew extreme Candyland didn't count as cardio?!) to running (well, maybe *jogging*) a 5K in nine weeks. I completed my first workout yesterday. It almost killed me. But I did it. And I'm going to do it again tomorrow.

I'm making some other changes too, as part of my Manifesto. To spend more time smiling and less time feeling guilty, to make healthy changes in my life that aren't about being "skinny" but about feeling amazing from the inside out. I want to work hard, play hard, love hardest of all. I want to practice gratitude, find beauty in the chaos, and see meaning in the ordinary, every single day.

I'll be blogging about some specific changes and how they turn out (almond milk in my cup of Dunkin this morning...yikes!)

And in the meantime, I'm wishing you all love, joy, health and good karma in 2013!

Happy New Year, everyone!