I like the week in-between Christmas and New Year.  I curl up, read books, listen to Dream Theater’s “Falling Into Infinity” album, and make good my intentions for the year to come.  Now, I don’t have a particular affinity for our New Year celebrations as I’m not convinced the New Year has begun (I shall post about that more when it happens), but everyone else resets, and it feels like a chance to get a head start on proceedings.

The first step in making new plans is to reflect on the old ones.  This proved quite surprising as, until I thought about it, I was convinced last year was terrible.  There may be a natural tendency in me to burn the fields before sowing the new crop: developing an angst to drive me to better things.  Alas, I’ve seen through it and must develop new strategies this year!

To return to point, I sat down to write lists of the good and bad points from 2009.  While I quickly dried up at only 6 negative aspects, it was not too difficult to rattle out the 35 positive events that blessed my year… nearly six times as many!

Further revelation came about after some rewording and an examination of the 2 lists:

Bad list – of the 6 atrocities, 4 were the result of external factors and 2 because I allowed them to happen.

Good list – only 2 positive events were directly due to outside influence: the majority were the result of participation and application.  Action words abound in the good list – check it out:

Survived, converted, travelled, completed, climbed, escaped, raced, toured, partied, connected, discovered, designed, constructed, tended, worked, created, developed, started, romanced, gifted, donated, sold, facilitated, assisted, participated, enjoyed, overcame, competed, claimed, committed, saved, helped, revelled, learnt, read, reduced, attended.

So what did I learn from this exercise?  2009 was actually quite fine, shit happens, and if I want 2010 to be full of positive things – I had better do something about it.