The first day of the next 365 days of my life.

'here I am again beginning at another end there's no turning back this time.' - Beth Hart, Easy

Ack. What was I thinking? Tell me I didn't do that?

Oh too bad. I did.

So it's the first day of the next 365 days of my life.

Do I feel any different than yesterday? Not really.

Sometimes I wonder why we separate our lives into these compartments.

Today being a new day, the first day of forever, the day that we will change, do something different, be someone different.

Someone told me once that if you want to get rid of a bad habit imagine an animal doing it.

So for smoking you'd imagine a cat smoking. Or an elephant drinking.

But then I told him about how in Africa elephants get drunk by eating the fermented fruits of the Marula tree and then they too behave terribly badly. So the argument kind of fell a little flat.

Of course, it's all apparently a hoax and was staged in Animals are Beautiful People so that didn't really work, but at the time it was funny.

People also drink a liqueur with the fruits of the Marula tree and get drunk, but they are not as funny as elephants when they're tipsy.

Amarula tastes really nice though, go try it.

Okay, let's leave the liqueur on the shelf and get back to the animals making lists and separating their life into days, months and years and having goals.

Ridiculous isn't it?

Here are two excerpts from pieces I wrote in 2007, that help me remember to lie back, watch the sun rise and set, and not make lists.

About a holiday in France:

"Vittel is beautiful, a slightly dilapidated stately old spa town. There are baroque building and then Art Deco in the newer buildings. I didn't know that Nancy, just up the road, was the starting point for much of the Art Deco movement. It's all quite beautiful in a bit of a neglected way. In Holland everything is manicured and structured. As you cross the border into Belgium the difference is immediately apparent. I'm not sure which I prefer, but the ever-so-gently down-at-heel surroundings in Vittel are charming.

I was reminded of my childhood in Africa when we had cocktails before dinner last night, sitting out on the lawn, with a velvety blue sky above us and acres of green in front of us, fringed with enormous trees. Ahh."

About living in the Netherlands:

"It seems more earnest when people ask me, shock-struck faces agape, why anyone would exchange Africa's immense beauty for Holland.

I react almost angrily in my defense of the beauty of the Netherlands. I say 'but Holland is beautiful too, in a different way!' They negate my reaction and I get angrier.

I remind them of its polders, canals, tall poplars across the polders, marching rows of windmills turning in white brilliance, coloured stripes of tulips across the landscape. They tell me about Table Bay, the plains, lions, giraffes. I counter and so we go on."