2014 will be here in another few hours and with it the horns and fireworks and champagne that usher in each new year.

Last year it was a moment of quiet contemplation for me as I made decisions regarding my life and my family and explored new roads and opportunities. This year there is a lot more champagne and music in the background as I type this post.

It’s been quite a year, filled with chaos and insanity, transitions and change. Change is difficult. It’s always easier to stay where you are, sigh deeply, and continue on whatever train your life has become. But changing it up, switching tracks and in some cases, switching the mode of transportation, is terrifying and at the same time liberating.

I’m a big believer in psychologically starting over. It’s like that “new notebook” feeling I used to get at the start of the school year. I would show up with all new supplies and sharpened pencils and swear that NOW I was going to be organized and take notes and be on top of every assignment.

By winter break, my backpack was a mess and I had crumpled unfinished assignments smashed into the bottom. I had maybe two days worth of notes from back in September and pages of doodles, albeit impressive, scrawled all over my once fresh notebooks.

But over vacation, I would go shopping for new supplies, and I would start the second semester with that same feeling of renewal. The same conviction that this time would be different.

In terms of school, it rarely was, but I still looked forward to that moment when I could start over. Put my screw ups aside and throw myself with ernest convictions into a reinvented image of myself.

It’s true, like with my school organizational aspirations, many times things don’t pan out. But sometimes they do. Sometimes those decisions made on New Year’s Eve actually become realities the following New Year’s Eve.

I still might not be so friendly with salads, and I still watch too much TV, but it has been a remarkable year.

Last year, I posted a New Year’s wish and looking back, it still holds true this year. January 1st is just a day – no different than January 2nd – but if gets you to think about where you are going and where you have been, then buy into that power and make the changes you want to turn your dreams into reality.

May this year be the year that you follow your dreams, believe in yourself, love your life, and embrace every calamity and set-back as simply steps in your journey to becoming everything you know you can be.

Have a Happy New Year.