Hello 2016! 

How are you? I hope you have been able to take enough time off from your 9 to 5 to relax and forget what day of the week it is. That’s the best thing about holidays I reckon, having no idea if it’s Wednesday or Saturday. I miss those days already!

I’ve been thinking about time, reflections, resolutions and intentions. I wonder how we became so hard-wired to hit the reset button every three hundred and sixty something days. Just FYI, 2016 is a leap year, so all those memes floating around about the next 365 days of awesome have been making me especially twitchy. 

I’ve been reading about people’s hopes for this year on social media, from decluttering to diets, to doing more of what makes you happy or less of what’s expected. 

Will this be your best year ever? Honestly, I don’t know. It’s worth a crack, if you can manage not to turn your resolve/desire into a yoke around your neck. 

A lot of people seem to be moving away from resolutions, and choosing a single word to express their intentions for the remaining 356 days of the year. I’m not sure if I think that’s more than semantics, but hey, whatever floats your boat, right? 

As I read more blog posts and Facebook soliloquies about setting intentions, I began to wonder if I could distill things down to a single word. I don’t think I change tack drastically on an annual basis, so that aspect of it doesn’t appeal to me. I don’t need to pivot from one annual goal to another, that’s not how I roll. 

I pondered, came up empty, and moved on. No biggie. 

Yesterday, I went to the library, and as I scanned the shelves and picked out books on botanical art, the sun, planets and the universe, and artists I want to know more about, I realised that I could pick a word that describes me, rather than my annual intention, with ease. 

Curious. 

I’m curious. 

Of course, I’m other things too, but I think curious is an over-arching descriptor I’m comfortable with. 

I’ve always been a “why is the sky blue?” kind of person. I read the answer again yesterday, it’s something about lightwaves or blue being god’s fave colour or something super technical. 

I love questions. 

I’m a wonderer. 

Right now, I’m sitting in my house, on a planet that’s spinning around a fiery star that is millions of kilometres away. How the heck does that work? 

As I read about the sun and orbit paths and how many moons Jupiter has yesterday, I wrote this down: 

        SO MUCH IS GOING ON RIGHT NOW to keep us alive. 

           That’s a BIG thought – a source of WONDER.

Dry, scientific answers don’t quash my curiousity/curiosity**. The facts don’t rob me of wonder. 

Trees and blue skies and skittish clouds sometimes take my breath away. 

I think cameras and television signals and fax machines are magic. 

Don’t even get me started on the immediacy of the interweb! 

The way our sense of smell can transport a person through decades, that’s incredible. 

Birds flying and swooping without stacking into each other – I mean, come on, that shit is cool! 

I’m curious. 

I’m filled with wonder. 

That won’t be changing as January 1, 2017 ticks over. 

I hope it never changes. 

One way I can ensure it never changes is to feed my curiousity**. That’s why I love the library. As I stood in the reference section yesterday, my curiousity was piqued. Languages, birds and animals, flora, biology, physics, art, so many topics to explore, all within arm’s reach. 

If you think about it, everything stems from being curious. Everything. 

If someone didn’t wonder what was over the hill, or dream of sailing beyond the horizon, or ponder the seasons or plot the stars or invent electricity…. well, you wouldn’t be reading this blog, would you? 

Do you set intentions each year?

What word describes you? 

Are you curious like I am? 

Do you remember The Curiousity Show?? 

Tell me everything. 

 

Annette 

 

**Now I’m curious about whether I’ve misspelt curiousity/curiosity in this post! Damn you US-centric spell check!! Which way do you spell it?