A Beginning

I don't always post on January 1.  Most of the time, but I am not tied to it.  I didn't mean to post today.  The kids were here with me for New Years, and I was up late and then early, and I had one warm little body snuggled in with me part of the night.  We had a lovely time, but I am a bit tired and somewhat sluggish.  

But the bakery is closed here in my small town.  Closed till the end of January, and I needed to bake some bread.  So I dug out the bread machine and got to work.  

I used the bread machine to mix and raise the dough, but I never bake it in it.  The machines perfect temperature for yeast to work and its dramatic kneading action makes such fine textured loaves.  And It's capacity is perfect.  Two nice sized loaves from one recipe for two pound dough.  Everytime I bake it in the machine though, even with my favourite recipes, it comes out dry and not very nice.  BUT, you take that same dough out of the machine and pop it into pans to raise once more before baking in your oven, and you are talking perfection.

As I took these out, I thought how perfect it was, to bake bread on the first day of a new year.  Now that the holidays are done, it is the season of soup and hunkering down and warm rich meals that will help you deal with the mental weight of winter.  It feels like the world focuses on the business of living our lives.    

That resonates with me this year.  I know how tired that old saying is that this is the first day of the rest of your lives, but 2017 was a year of endings in such huge ways, and of adapting, again, in such huge ways.  It just feels like this is the first day of something special, I don't know what, but it feels different and new, even if it is not.  I feel such a renewed sense of freedom and a lightness.  I don't know why I feel so good this year, but I do.  

So this year, I hope to make mistakes.  Fresh new swaths of them.  As Neil Gaiman says,

“I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes.

Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You're doing things you've never done before, and more importantly, you're Doing Something.

So that's my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody's ever made before. Don't freeze, don't stop, don't worry that it isn't good enough, or it isn't perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life.

Whatever it is you're scared of doing, Do it.

Make your mistakes, next year and forever.”