Do-over!!!

In a few hours, the new year will begin, and as the prospect of new beginnings suddenly seem possible, last year's bad vibes will get packed up along with the Christmas leftovers, never to be seen again, thank God.

This past year has been very difficult for me; 2006 was a year of abandonment, heartache, anger (oh how anger is energy-consuming....)solitude, major disapointments and tiredness (well, from all that anger!!!) It seems all my energy was used up to get over my broken heart, still very fragile and sore. But as I look back on the year that is just about to end, I also see that it's a year where I truly learned about coping with solitude and not dying from it, at the same time realising that doing everything on your own is a hell of a lot of work; caring for my children and making a comfortable and fun life for them; it's also the year where I met M. and K., two kindred spirits who washed up on the shores of Ottawa, a bit in a daze after living in London, Paris and St-Martin's. Their presence in this way too conservative town made me feel less alone and their friendship means a lot to me; my friend S. who cheers me up every chance she gets, hopefully this year I will be able to do the same for her; plus 2006 was the year my career as a translator really started to take off, if I play this right 2007 could be even better; I started to work on my novel again, and will be done sometime in 2007...I also saw Paris for the first time, and had the chance to meet Blue, a fellow translator and blogger who was kind enough to show me around her Paris and to be a friend, and reading her blog Eurostar Blues (you can find the link in my blogroll) cheered me up all year long; and for that I am thankful!

I think the trick is to look at the things that went right and not at the things that went wrong in 2006. This way we can all focus on positive instead of negative. Like Blue told me this past August : "Y'a toujours du positif dans le négatif!" (There's always positive in negative!)

So cheers to you, my friends, wherever you are tonight, I will raise my glass to you.