Reflecting on the year of "Why Not?"

  
                                                    
                                                    Source: thehollywoodgossip.com
I've never been big on resolutions.  Sure, I make New Year's resolutions, like every other person in the world, but I've never been great about keeping them.  Something about lifestyle change in January is hard to make a reality.

Last January, however, I decided that 2011 was the year of "Why not?"

Allow me to explain.  2010 had been a fairly crappy year for me.  Mostly, my father's illness had clouded most of it, and right as things were starting to look up, he died.  And that same week I got a UTI which subsequently turned into a kidney infection.  My life was AWESOME.  I had spent a lot of 2010 with my mother and my father, never straying far from home in case one of them needed me.  I'm glad I had that time with my family, but it was not the fun life of a twenty-six year old.  I had started to become preoccupied with the idea of getting married, and watching my friends slowly get engaged while I was inching out the last of my full strength Cipro was just a little more than I could handle.

One of the parenting blogs I read (Yes.  I read parenting blogs for fun.  No, I don't have any children.) said that Robert Pattinson was making 2011 the year of "Why not?"  And "Why not?" sounded awesome to me.  Add to the fact that 2011 was the year of my five year college reunion, and we had ourselves a plan.

Let me tell you, the year of "Why not?" was AWESOME.  it applied to every part of my life.  "Why not?" made me start living more and stop just sitting around.  "Why not?" made me do things I wouldn't normally have done.  Stay out for an extra beer?  Why not?  Dinner in midtown on a Wednesday?  Why not?  Cruise to the Bahamas?  Why not?  Snowboarding even though you'll probably just fall on your tush?  Sure, why not?

The year of "Why not?" included three vacations (including a cruise to the Bahamas on Royal Caribbean.  Their motto is "Why not?"!), three weekend trips, making new friends, reintroducing drinking back into my life, learning how to cook, my much anticipated and amazing five year college reunion, and a week of celebrating my birthday!  The year of "Why not?" made me unafraid to try new things, even if they failed.  It made me take back my life as a twenty-six year old and start doing the things I wanted to do.  The year of "Why not?" gave me the courage to remember that I was young and had every right to be happy in all aspects of my life.

2011 was awesome for me.  Not because it was all peaches and unicorns, but because it helped me remember the seventeen year old girl that I was ten years ago, and just how much she wanted from life.  It helped me to remember that I was not defined by my relationship or by my job, but by the things that I did and wanted.

Even though 2012 has its own motto, I still find myself asking, "Why not?"

And if there isn't a good reason not to, I just do it.