Happy New Year everyone!  I don’t know about you, but I like waking up on New Years Day without a hangover.  The year that lies ahead seems much more promising.

When I think about New Year’s Eve, I think about Dick Clark.  I told my husband last night, I’ve spent more New Year’s Eve nights in bed with Dick Clark than any other man, and now that Dick has passed on, my husband has an opportunity to catch up and pass our his record.  Dick always represented a past and  promising present for me – Whenever I watched him (except for the last couple of years) I was reminded of how well this man was aging.  It was encouraging to know that with the passing of every year he stayed the same.  I had hope I could age the same way.

Frankly, this “holiday” has never seemed like a big deal to me.  I get really anxious when I’m around drunks, I guess divorcing an alcoholic will do that for you.  I especially hate the amateurs that aren’t very good at it.  So we find our solace in the comfort of our home – again, eating good food, watching a good movie or three and talking about the year to come and what we want out of it.

I’m not much for waking up on New Year’s Day and making a resolution, but I want things and I have to figure out how to get them.  The universe doesn’t stop to pause and consider the year past nor the year that stretches out in front of me.   Why should I?  I guess the answer for me is, now after writing for the past year I fully believe I am the author of my own life and if I want something to happen in my life, then I am the one to make that happen.  I think my mantra for 2014 is No one is coming.  It’s all up to me.  Since I don’t believe in resolutions I am looking at the New Year with a different set of eyes.

A practice I developed when I was still working was, every year I, along with my department did a SWOT analysis for both themselves and our department.   This gave us as a team, and us as individuals an idea of what we needed to do in the coming year and why we needed to do it.

I haven’t visited this practice since I walked away from my pencil skirts and high heels.  If you’re not familiar with the SWOT analysis, SWOT stands for

Strengths

Weaknesses

Opportunities

Threats

2014 is the year I get back into the practice of my own personal SWOT analysis.  I need to know where I’m going and why I’m starting a journey in that direction.  I need to know where middleSage is going and what Lee and I need to do to get it there.

So before we get to our resolutions this year, we’re both taking the month of January to reassess and do our own SWOT analysis. We’ll be addressing our Strengths, our Weaknesses (gulp), the Opportunities that may be hidden in the new year that stretches out in front of us and finally, we’ll get real about the Threats that may be nipping at the seat of our pants, too.  So, that’s what we’re going to be thinking and writing about in January….I hope you’ll join us!