'dewy field'

Gliffaes Country House Hotel in Brecon Beacons, Wales.

My favourite place, from differing views.

(literally) putting together the pieces

Photo by: hadsie

It has been more than four months since I've blogged. So long in fact, that I'd forgotten my passwords to Flickr and Blogger -- even with my so-called 'system' of passwords.

But it's the end of 2007 and the start of 2008 is only a day away, so here is my little wrap-up.

2007 has been a year of endings, beginnings, consolidations. With the passing of my mom's dog Peaches last January and with my November visit to Florida to visit my stepmother, I found endings to the grievings of my parents' deaths in 2004 and 2005 respectively. Of course, I don't mean I don't think of them all the time and miss them often. But somehow something has shifted and their absence is part of my life and I feel okay. I feel a sense of moving forward with them, not without them.

I have over a year with Metro News under my belt, and it has been very good. I was sent on a travel junket to Manchester, England and Wales and wrote two pieces which were well-received. VisitBritain, which sponsored the trip, nominated my Manchester piece for a travel journalism award. I am ecstatic and proud and humbled all at once.

Dabbled with trying to get my body back into shape with mixed, erratic results. Some bellydancing, a good month's start at the 'Y' which fizzled away into 'not-finding-the-time.' A month's sickness starting in mid-November that wasn't bad enough to make me miss work, but just enough to make me feel old and decrepit.

I have had the week off between Christmas and New Year's and go back to work New Year's Day. Had a lovely holidays with my brothers and their families, and good parties with friends and co-workers before the holidays. I've spent the holidays doing jigsaw puzzles. One 1,000-piece challenger and now a 500-piece deceptively difficult Tuscany vineyard. If my mind, or soul, is muddled and confused, I find jigsaws literally put the pieces into focus and some kind of sense emerges. Great therapy.

So I have a sense of where I want the philosophical construction of the year 2008 to take me. For quite a few years I've needed to have a gentle hand on the tiller, open to new surroundings and beginnings. I have a sense of arrival now.

I want to get myself in the best possible shape this 54-to-55-year-old woman can get in. Not in a fanatical sense, but in a lasting sense where I can feel a certain strength. For more fun and hopefully a male touch in my life, I have signed up for some salsa classes starting in a few weeks.

Professionally and from the deepest part of my soul, I will study travel writing and travel writers and hopefully do more writing in that vein. I have bought A Sense of Place written by Michael Shapiro who was last year's grand prize winner of the VisitBritain travel journalism award. He wrote a beautiful, lyrical piece on Wales for National Geographic Traveler. In A Sense of Place, Shapiro has interviewed 18 of the world's finest travel writers, and the book is beckoning me.

And last, and hopefully not least, I endeavour to get my worldly belongings in shape -- to throw out the useless and take care of the rest in an ongoing regularity. This is the part for which I need the most help!

If anyone is still reading this very long post -- God bless you and keep you and yours in the new year!