Every time New Year’s rolls around, it’s time to consider what you want for the year to come as the big New Year‘s Resolutions need to be decided upon. 

As 2010 began this time, I can honestly say that I had resolved to do nothing.  No New Year’s Resolutions for me.  In fact, I believe that is fulfilling a previous New Year’s Resolution which was to resolve not to resolve anything again. My life is relatively planned out for this year.  Yes, I am a new mother and this year my son will begin crawling, walking and talking and we will be able to engage in new and exciting ways.  I don’t want to miss any of it, so this year I am a stay at home mum. 

So, no New Year’s Resolutions required.  This works for me.  Well… it worked for me until about four weeks into the new year, when I suddenly realised that having no goals for the year really left me feeling a little bit unfulfilled and unchallenged.  (Though Irealise raising Tyson is all the challenge I need).

With eleven remaining months ahead of me, I have to have some sort of goals, or I will be consumed with the single role and put myself in a position of potentially resenting it before too long.

Where to start.  Well, of course I want to be as good a mum as I can be.  I want to be a better wife.  Pretty good goals, and something I can do in the course of fulfilling my current occupation of motherhood.

Unfortunately, I am not that easily satisfied and I need something more again.  A greater challenge. 

Then it came to me.  I need to experience new things.  For the years that I have been married, I’ve watched my husband go to India, go to the Commonwealth Games, go to Haiti and the Dominican Republic.  His life has been what my life was before marriage and I long for that excitement again. 

Don’t get me wrong, I love my husband and love my son, but have lost much of who I was.  Now, it’s the dreaded seventh year of marriage – the year of the itch – and I’m determined to not be itchy through unfulfillment or envy of my husband’s life that I want for me.

So, here it is – my New Year’s Resolution.  This year, I will deliberately seek out new experiences to have either on my own, with Tyson, with Luke, with friends or for us as a family. 

It doesn’t have to be huge, just something I’ve not done before.  I have to not let fear be an excuse to not do something. 

Luke calls it my “Something Old, Something New” Challenge.  It’s out with the old way of thinking and in with new experiences. 

Where to start? I have no idea!! There’s so much I haven’t done, but I see the 1000 steps in my future along with the Eureka Sky Deck, which is a particularly big deal because I’ve in recent years developed a completely irrational fear of heights.  Not big things, but new things.

Well, I’m off now to do some research to find things I haven’t done before.  I wonder what would happen if I googled “things I haven’t done before”…. Better go find out!