The visit I made to Kona with my guests turned out to be a fine reflective time. Faye and I stayed back while the rest went to Mauna Kea for star-gazing, a nine hour tour. She slept quite a bit, as she had a bad cold. So I swam in the Royal Kona Hotel pool, and then got her up to go to supper. Unfortunately we didn’t anticipate that most restaurants closed early on New Year’s Eve. We found Ultimate Burger open; Faye has one of their signature grass-fed local beef burgers. I tried their Ahi (seared tuna) sandwich. Wow, that was fantastic!
Faye went back to bed when we returned from eating. I stayed outside and watched the sun set over the Pacific. That was such a treat, as I can see neither sunrise nor sunset over water from our house. I also found it interesting that it stays light longer here on the west side of the island, while in Honoka’a we sit in the shadow of the volcanoes which brings on an earlier dusk on our side.
Jade got back late and announced that she needed cough syrup – she was the last member of our family to come down with the crud, not to be confused with the flu. Luckily we had some along, and we all hit the sheets. But I woke up again at midnight when I heard the fireworks. From my hotel room lanai I could see the display, and even hear the people six blocks away at the seawall whooping it up.
The next morning, I went for coffee at Java on the Rocks while everyone else slept in. I liked their ad, “if coffee were a religion, this place would be a temple.” It was 8 am and the occupants were all about my age – clearly the non-partying types. The other thing I noticed is that they were all fit; not a fat one among them except for me. How interesting – these must be the health conscious tourists. Maybe the less fit were drawn to a different kind of breakfast place.
We were treated to the ocean right outside the seawall, café tables placed in sand, and sheltered by canvas canopies. The waves were as high as they had been all week, slamming into the rocks and splashing spectacularly high. The focus here is clearly coffee: big ceramic mugs with steaming brew. They have their own secret method of grinding the Kona coffee beans; I think they just bruise them. Despite the fact that there was free internet, I saw only one person indulging – the only youngish woman in the place; she had green hair and an Aussie accent. I heard quite a few Australians at our hotel.
The coffee was good and gave me an excuse to reflect on the start of 2013 as I savored it. Should I make some resolutions? Of the resolutions I made last year, how many did I fulfill? I believe strongly that if you ask the Universe for something, especially if you do it in writing, that you have a great chance of it coming true. But I don’t necessarily wait until New Year’s Eve to make them. I make requests all year long.
I’ve been doing a number of things this past year, some new, in the spirit of Trust – Ask – Accept with Gratitude. I wrote a movie of my life for the next three years, one of the tools my Life Coach taught me. I learned hypnotherapy and implanted suggestions to make changes in my life. I wrote in my Gratitude Journal.
I love my toolkit, and I love adding to it. These tools certainly worked to get me to Paradise. But now that I’m here, are the tools still working? I had dug out and brought along my Gratitude Journal from January 2012, and found I had written four resolutions at the beginning of last year. Amazingly, they were still relevant 12 months later: these were clearly the things I needed to do.
1) Continue with daily reflective reading and writing. I think my outlet for this shifted somewhat from my Gratitude Journal to my book and blog over the year. But I definitely write reflectively every day. None-the-less, I need to get back to the Gratitude Journal daily, as the insights I get from pen on paper are different from what I get from fingers on keyboard.
2) Increase exercise. Yes, I did this. I continued with yoga and added water aerobics three times a week. However, when I got sick at the end of the year and now having guests, I fell off the wagon. Time to jump back on.
3) Allow myself to “do nothing” for as long as my body/mind/temperament allow. When I look back on my writings from last year, I see that I was concerned that I hadn’t yet found my passion during this third chapter of my life, but I was worried that I’d get swept into something not of my choosing, or not reflecting my Passion. I wound up turning down some opportunities that didn’t feel right. What did feel right was starting my editing business (Paradise Editing) and now I have several steady clients. I also wrote my book, and then started blogging. The discovery that writing is my passion came as a surprise, as I was mostly writing as a means of reflection and telling the story of my new life to folks back home. And I “did nothing” long enough to decide on a path, rather than take on an accidental second career.
4) Get the house cleared and things put away. The house is finally in very good shape. I went through the last of the boxes that had been shoved in my bedroom when I redecorated that room. And I made the house my home by tackling quite a few remodeling projects with Kim and Thomas.
Bedroom prior to renovations.
Bedroom after renovations
Bedroom before renovations
Bedroom after renovations
Overall, I’d give myself a B+. I had a productive year. And yes, it appears that the tools are continuing to work: Trust – Ask – Accept with Gratitude. So I turned my thoughts to what I will ‘Ask the Universe’ this year. What are my New Year’s resolutions for 2013?
1) Continue with reflective writing. As part of this, I want to put more entries into my Gratitude Journal. I know this nourishes me and keeps my spirit healthy.
2) Lose 10 pounds. It gets harder every year, but I’m not doing this for vanity. I need to prevent diabetes and heart disease. This means getting back to the pool for water aerobics among other things.
3) Grow my editing business. I’d like to add two or three more steady clients.
4) Make progress on publishing my book, as outlined in the “movie” of my next three years.
5) Reach out to my family and connect. I have wanted this, but it’s time to put some action behind it. Reconnecting with the girls before they leave the nest was one of the key reasons for retiring early. Interesting that I hadn’t listed it as one of my resolutions last year.
I further resolved to break down each of these resolutions into tasks that propel me forward by the end of January. Yes, I am ‘asking the Universe,’ but I have to do my part too. So that’s the next step. By the time my giant cup of coffee was empty, I had my resolution list finished, and I felt better about facing the new year. Taken together they are a stretch, but definitely doable. I’m ready.
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