“Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Well here it is…. new year’s day! A brand new start to a brand new year! A clean slate! A chance to start over and perhaps make some changes for the better.

(And here you thought it was just a day off to sleep off the groggy reminders of the night before and maybe buy a new treadmill to use for a week, then hang clothes off of for the next 6 months instead.)

But just why does everyone feel like they need a new year to make changes and do things they want but haven’t yet attempted? Why do we feel the need to wait 364 days for just ONE day a year to try and lose 20 lbs or start calling our moms more often or to try and bungee jump off the Brooklyn Bridge? (Although I don’t think the NYPD would be TOO HAPPY if you tried that last one ANY DAY of the year!) Maybe it just seems easier to start something new once we have completed something else.  Perhaps all of those years when our mom made us finish our green beans before we were allowed dessert trained our brains to complete one thing before we start another. (Ok…it was also probably to make us finish those green beans so the chocolate chip cookies wouldn’t fill our tummies up first but if we got a bonus lesson in there….oh, what the heck!) Now that way of thinking isn’t necessarily such a bad thing, but you know what? And this might come as a surprise…

We can actually start a new ANY TIME AND ANY DAY of the year!

No….really! Believe it or not IT’S TRUE! We don’t have to wait until large amounts of tourists congregate in Times Square for hours on end with NO access to bathrooms just to watch a small sparkly lit ball (and yes…..it is a LOT smaller than you think. I know, cause I’ve seen it in Times Square dozens of times and was surprised on how much bigger it looks on TV) to make changes in our lives. We don’t have to wait for that opened container of egg nog that we started drinking on Christmas Day but didn’t quite finish drinking to curdle and turn slowly transform into egg nog cheese by December 31…

……not that that has EVER happened to me or anything….*ahem*…. but back to what I was saying….

….we don’t have to wait for any one “special” day to make some changes for the better. Any day that we wake up in the morning can be THE DAY! You know….THE DAY…..to start trying those things you always wanted to but never got around to, or do those things you keep meaning to, or do those things you know you should but just never find the right time to. Make today THE DAY for you, and NOT just because it’s new year’s day….but because time is a precious gift we should not waste and because if you put some things off for too long, they just might never get done. But even if with the best of intentions you just can’t start today, don’t beat yourself up. Just pick yourself up and try again tomorrow. We only fail when we stop trying or never even start to begin with. Good things can happen ANY TIME we want…..but we just need to take that first step to get them started.

The holidays are one of the BEST times of year to be see NYC. There is an overall magic in the air this time of year in “the city that never sleeps” and every year, I try my best to enjoy as much as I can of what this great city has to offer.  Here is one of the videos I made last year of some of the Christmas fun I had in Manhattan.

Until next time everyone…ta ta, toodles and Happy New Year!

~Tracie Dee