It’s said that the holidays are the Most Magical Time of the Year.

My horoscope had foretold that there would be peace among everyone gathering at the table this season.

For Christmas I was given a gift card. I figured out how to use it on the internet to buy rainbow moonstone stud earrings.

As 2023 nears I’m grateful to end this year with renewed gratefulness for my good fortune.

I urge readers to live with gratitude. Even for the inevitable trials we all face I say: be grateful for the hard times as well as the beauties.

2023 I envision as the Year of Reflection. The time to examine where we want to go and what we want to do.

My New Year’s Resolution is to buy a skateboard. To practice rolling on the asphalt roadway in the park. At 13 years old I had a red skateboard. Rolling down the hilly streets where I lived gave me joy.

Not doing an ollie or other explosive move I simply loved rolling along.

Remembering this short-lived hobby I got the idea to buy a skateboard. Why can’t a 57-year old woman skate? is what I thought.

A Generation X girl living in her Third Chapter I’m on a kick of self-reinvention. My motto is risk, fail, rise up, repeat.

What gave us joy when we were younger should not be ruled out as a hobby in the 25 years after 50.

Too often we become adults and abandon the happy-makers because we think we should do what everyone else tells us we’re supposed to do to be successful and be accepted.

No–I was miserable living in the mainstream in the years I thought I should try to have a normal life.

Decades later realizing that the only way I would be happy was to live my life Left of the Dial.

In this last week of 2022 I urge readers to join me in renouncing the tried-and-often-(not)-true approaches to living our lives.

For my birthday I’m going to buy a skateboard. Watch YouTube videos on beginner skateboarding techniques.

Watch out as this Skate Girl rolls in the park in the spring.

I hope my blogging gives you the courage to try something new (or return to something that gave you joy).

This really is the Most Magical Time of the Year when we’re getting ready for 2023 and the possibilities that beckon.

Risk, fail, rise up, repeat. If you ask me that’s the only way to live going forward.