New Years eve morning, reading and catching up with mail, wondering what I should do, winds are too high in the mountains, so I'm in Seattle. I'm drinking bad tea since I ran out of the good stuff, and tried to get the tea I wanted yesterday but Peets was out, so it's settling for a tea bag of black tea to start my day.

I'm not sharing my resolutions, I don't have hard rules for the new year but I seem to always have ideas and thoughts, things I want to work on to make a better life for me and everyone around me.

It's been a long year(about 365 days), like almost all of my years it seems to be a year of great joy and great loss. I've spent a lot of time thinking about the things I've lost and maybe not enough time thinking about the things that I've gained or that I've always had.

To start off with a clean plate and an empty chalkboard, I want to ask for forgiveness for the things I've done that have let anyone down, or hurt them, and I want to say that I've let go of the angers, disappointments and pains of the past. I'm more interested in the present than anything that has happened before. And thanks for everything all of you have done to make my life a better one.

This year (like all years) has the potential to be the best year, lets all walk towards that idea.
Thanks for looking, reading and being around,
Christian

2008 daily photos will be here.

"This spending of the best part of one's life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it reminds me of the Englishman who went to India to make a fortune first, in order that he might return to England and live the life of a poet. He should have gone up garret at once. "

This time from Thoreau's Walden

"The great arises out of small things that are honored and cared for. Everybody’s life really consists of small things. Greatness is a mental abstraction and a favorite fantasy of the ego. The paradox is that the foundation for greatness is honoring the small things of the present moment instead of pursuing the idea of greatness. The present moment is always small in the sense that it is always simple, but concealed within it lies the greatest power. Like the atom, it is one of the smallest things yet contains enormous power. Only when you align yourself with the present moment do you have access to that power. Or it may be more true to say that it then has access to you and through you to this world."
Tolle

http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/world/20071227_BHUTTO_FEATURE/index.html?#section1