Don’t you just love the smell of a New Year? All that potential, all those unknown months stretching towards the next time you’ll don a Santa hat at work drinks and hope to all you believe that video of you singing Helen Reddy’s I Am Woman never makes it to Youtube. A new year. More fun than the end of the financial year, and much more fun than looking back retrospectively at the year that’s just gone and the opportunities you’ve missed along the way.

As 2013 prepared for it’s Swan Song – a figure of speech I’m no longer as fond of since I found it what it actually meant – I sat at home, and gave up. 2013 was too hard. There were no interviews, no jobs. My rip roaring success with Quitting Smoking dissolved into a house sitting gig that was fuelled by wine I wouldn’t have been caught dead drinking 6 months earlier.

The writing dried up and the weigh piled on and all in all I couldn’t wait for that moment when 2013 sang it’s last and buggered off into the land of myth and legend.

2014 – so far – has been about getting back on track. Quitting Smoking again. Acknowledging that my fat shorts are now slightly looser than body hugging ( but not by much) and trying to figure out a way to find a job when everyone I’ve spoken to tells me the economy has finally crapped itself and died and at 40 I’m too close to retirement and too expensive.

One thing I have decided for this year though is no more unrealistic goals. Every year I sit down and write a million and one goals, all that will happen “some time soon” or when they “great sky fairy drops a boatload of cash on me”. As the year progresses the overwhelm is so great I end up collapsing under the weight of it.

This year, I made just 1 goal. To take 1 step, 1 piece of action towards the outcome of each area of my life I want to change. Doesn’t matter what it is. Just 1 small step. The theory being that by New Years Eve 2014 I’ll have 365 steps made towards reaching a variety of goals.

This year is about both; being realistic and removing from my “impractical” list all the things I’ve wanted to achieve but allowed fear to say where never going to happen.

So it’s clean slate time. All those past goals that hung around my neck have been released and now I work on dirtying up that clean slate.

I hope you all had a fantastic Christmas/New Year/Holiday season and I can’t wait to read about your adventures as 2014 rolls on by.