The Daily Challenge: Day 108

Happy New Year! I want to start with apologizing for slacking the past week. The holidays are always a busy time and I decided I needed a break from blogging - a chance to devote myself to spending more time with family and friends and less time sitting on my computer! But now that it's the beginning of a new year, it's a great time to reflect on all the wonderful things of 2009 and admire what is to come in the next twelve months. I'll start by reflecting on this morning.

I woke up today. And by that, I don't mean I woke up to an alarm and jumped out of bed. I mean that I woke up from the state of mind I've been in for the past 20 years! What a way to start the new year. I woke up not just to a new day, month, year, or decade, but to something bigger and better than all of that. I woke up to opportunity, possibility, love, friendship, change, optimism, excitement, happiness, and a promising year full of all of those things. Today is not just the beginning of a wonderful new year, but instead is something that I've been searching for a while for... the idea of embracing what each day brings - no matter what it might be. It's a scary thought to completely submit yourself to embracing happiness, sadness, whatever it is - but to think if you started each morning with the way people often go into each year: resolutions, reflection, and new hope. What if each morning you woke up with the idea of making today the best it could be, being the best version of yourself, and sharing joy with everyone around you, rather than waiting until next New Year's Eve to declare your "resolutions." Can't each day be a new chance to do all of that? Why do we have to wait until December 31 at midnight to begin living our lives? If every single day we woke up and honestly tried to be the best person that we could, what a wonderful beautiful life that would be! And so I think, with this new "awakening" (if you can call it that), I am going to do just that. And the real challenge here is that it's not going to be a "here's to 2010" sort of thing - but here's to living my life from here on out - being and doing the best that I absolutely can - with friends, family, myself, and the world around me.

As I reflect on the past year and decade, I can honestly say that all of my experiences and stories have led me to exactly what I just wrote: beauty is surrounding us, and it is up to ME to witness it every single day, rather than waiting for it to somehow appear in my life. What's better than looking out to a driveway full of newly fallen snow? Or watching the sunrise on my way to work? Or enjoying a cup of coffee and catching up with an old friend? It's all so wonderful and exciting and I can't even contain my eagerness to share that with everyone!

I hope that each and every person has a chance to reflect on what the beautiful things are in their own life - and to realize that sometimes it's the unexpected little things that you will find astounding. Cheers to a new year, and more importantly, a new, uplifting attitude toward each and every day. Happy 2010!

Here are some of my favorite moments of the past year:

- My first view of the beach in Cannes, soon to be one of my favorite places in the entire world.

- Returning to Paris and revisiting the city that I first fell in love with when I was 12, and witnessing the same unchanged beauty eight years later.