Happy New Year!!

I wish I'd written this.

Kat in Ohio, one of my online quilting buddies (and quilter of the famous Acorn quilt), shared it with our group. It is from Quilt University's newsletter and sums up my feelings quite nicely.

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Happy New Year! What is it about January 1 that makes us look back and resolve to do things better? Differently? As children, we picture life as a linear progression. Finish school, find a job, get married, have children. Somewhere in there, we expect to start living happily ever after.

It turns out that life is not a straight line. We change houses, spouses, friends, cities, jobs. Whole industries disappear as technology changes and we end up on paths that didn't even exist when we were young.

As we get older, we reach what we thought was the end of the path and realize there is a lot more to come. The little things of life have a funny way of becoming the turning points to big changes. We make dozens of decisions every day and never have a clue which one could be life altering.

Along the way, we hit bumps and potholes and it sometimes seems we are in a dense fog and not sure which road to take. Then there are those wonderful moments where you find yourself at the top of a hill and you can see for miles, with roads branching off in a hundred directions. Everything seems possible. You can have a lot of fun taking those side roads.

On this eve of 2006, I am resolutely ignoring my bad habits, the pounds I wish I could lose and all those unquilted tops in my closet. My only resolution is to keep turning corners and see what happens next.

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To the left, a portion of the Fannie B. Shaw Prosperity Quilt: "Prosperity is Just Around the Corner" from the Dallas Museum of Art. Ms. Shaw's quilt was commentary on President Herbert Hoover's promises during the depression.