Happy New Year 2010!

Yesterday was Epiphany, which means that Christmas is officially over. That makes today my New Year's Day! Today we will take down the Christmas decorations, and start back on The McCombs Plan. Actually, it may take us a couple more days to fully rejoin the plan, as we have a lot of dairy in the fridge to use up yet. I am so looking forward to feeling great again! I had so much energy when we were on the plan before, and while I'm not as draggy as I was before it, after all the holiday food, I'm definitely not where I want to be.

Last night at the Epiphany service, Father John had a table with a nativity scene and candles in front of the altar. He told us that he would serve communion off to the side, so that each of us could stop by the Nativity on our way to take communion. He suggested that we study the baby Jesus, and think about what we have to offer him in this new year. I got to thinking about that, and realized that I don't know what I have to offer this year, to church, personally, or professionally. So my prayer as I reached the altar/nativity was to figure out what I will do with 2010.

I'm not really teaching Pilates anymore, although I have had a few requests to teach a class, perhaps at the church. I'm doing my voiceover work, but that's 30 minutes a day, every three weeks. I've thought about getting a job of any sort, but that would hinder our ability to up & travel, which we like to do fairly often.

I really enjoyed what I did through the holidays: I made lists and did a lot of cooking, taking photographs and writing about each recipe as I made it. Everybody seemed so amazed that I made everything myself. Sad, really! And they were only standard recipes, like bread made with yeast & all purpose flour, not even soaked or sprouted or anything.

I'm getting more and more into trying to eat a more "traditional" diet, experiencing and reading about all the health benefits of doing so. I don't feel like I'm advanced enough in that to really start a blog about it yet, though, a la Nourishing Gourmet or Cheeseslave. I will probably blog about it here anyway, as it helps me clarify my thinking to write about it. And maybe someone will find my own babysteps in that direction instructive.

Cooking and photographing and blogging may be fun for me, but I will also need something that gets me out of the house and with people on a regular basis. Husband travels for a living, and is gone for anywhere from 3 to 10 days at a time. I'm WAY too extraverted to just be at home with the dogs for days on end.

In that vein: as I do seem to be something of a hausfrau these days, one of my resolutions is to be a better one. When Husband is home, we like to just enjoy each other's company, so I try to do the cleaning and organizing while he's gone. I'm going to work on being better at doing the FlyLady system. It really helps me to stay on top of things. Interestingly, it's quite similar to a system I worked out on my own a couple of different times in my life when I was very organized!

Also on the personal improvement side of things, I want to get back into going to yoga and ballet classes to work on my balance and flexibility. There are adult yoga & ballet classes very close to my house, almost walking distance, so it's completely ridiculous that I haven't been going. I also got my bicycle fixed up about a year ago, then never got on it. After my knee surgery, I begged and begged to be allowed to ride it, and still haven't. *Sigh*. So that's another thing I could work on. Heck, I could ride the bike to the yoga classes...

As far as professionally, I could work on getting together a voice resume to try to do more voiceover work, which I quite enjoy.

I love to sing. I was working on getting together a cabaret act, but my accompanist is in Chicago, which makes that pretty hard to do! I would like to get back into voice lessons to improve my singing; breath control in particular. For that matter I would like to take some acting lessons. I don't think I've ever had an actual acting lesson in my life, and I do love doing community theatre. There are a couple of shows coming up later this spring that I'll audition for, so that will be fun.

Husband just reminded me that I've always wanted to take sign language lessons, so that is something else to look into. I've always felt that sign language combines two of my biggest interests: language, and movement.

My friend Cynthia did some aptitude testing last year - I might consider going to the Johnson-O'Connor Research Foundation and do that, too. It was quite interesting to hear her talk about it. What brought it up was I was playing a word game that I'm insanely good at, and I thought, okay, what real world job would use this skill?" I mentioned it to her, and she told me of this testing she did that shows that sort of thing. It's very different from the interest and personality inventories I did years ago in "career counseling". This tests your actual native skills and suggests what career would use those skills.

Ack. Toxic Option Overload. This is the problem! So many things to choose from. Just have to figure out which things are priority, sort the logistics, and get on with it!

Happy New Year 2010!