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No other time of the year births such feelings of hope and anticipation. I love the turn of the calendar from one year to the next, buying a new agenda, searching the shelves until I find the perfect Day Planner to organize my year, my life. And then I pull out the colored markers from my childhood and I write reminders to myself, highlight significant dates and prepare to personalize my year with the little details that scream ME! Call me old fashioned, but I like to see what I’m doing spread out in scrawled handwriting in front of me and my Blackberry tends not to be used to its highest function merely because I like the written word – the physical act of writing. I like to tuck business cards and pages torn from magazines into the back pocket of the Agenda, and gather the tidbits that symbolize my year.

As I open last year’s agenda to copy a few dates into this year’s, I lose a leaf from last October in Prague. My husband and I were walking arm & arm and on the back of a bright orange car a leaf hung as if placed there by an angle. I bent and picked the waxy leaf twirling it in my fingers, before tucking it into the notebook in my purse, a perfect symbol of the day.

A paper candy wrapper is taped to a page in November with the phone number of a drag queen I met in Amsterdam and for the life of me, I can’t remember why I was going to call him, but I smile remembering that crazy night when me, my photographer friend and her British photographer boyfriend, my CFO husband, a Belgian drag queen, a Christian missionary and a Dutch TV game show host went out for drinks after a gallery opening. What an eclectic group we were and what a wonderful gamut the conversation ran.

A hotel business card sticks out of August, reminding me of those long hot days on the Amalfi Coast and a brochure for a private cruise marks mid-year. Our skipper wore Armani, I remember with a smile, thinking surely I overpaid for that exposition but not caring because it was the perfect day this year. We sailed to a private island for lunch, caught fresh from the Med, and wiggled our toes in the sand while watching our boat bob with the light rise and fall of the sea.

Last January finds notes scrawled of frantic to-do’s before our move from Amsterdam to Berlin and one day is circled with a giant red heart that reads “Going Away Dinner with IWC Officers” as I remember all the ladies who showed up for my last dinner in Amsterdam before moving. We took over the restaurant in a gaggle of laughter and friendship and fun.

February is filled with organized lists, fitting for my new life in Germany. Meeting with relocation agent, meeting with electrician to hang chandelier, meeting with guy from phone company to hook up the internet in my new apartment and so on and as the year progresses it shows my life evolving in Berlin. From noting the date of my first German class, to the address of a friend from church and the Women’s Bible Study information to noting details about a new friend.

March finds notes on my interview with The Swiss News reminding me to tell the article’s author a few important informational bites, while April is filled with pink ink, writing Parisian notes, as I planned an outing to meet Travel+Leisure. And then there was May in Florence – twice we were in Italy this year and one page is filled with websites listing real estate listings in Italy.

On the pages of my agenda, I write of life and love, of laughing and of crying. I note the date of a friend’s death and ponder what an amazing lady Jill was – knowing her changed me, made me better than I was before, inspired me for the future. And I mark babies born, my friend Kelli’s daughter’s birth being documented in the same blue ink as Kelli’s eyes and I note the meaning of the name of her daughter – “’We asked for this child, now she is ours” and I pray blessings on her, wishing great things for her future.

I’m an old-fashioned girl living in a modern world. My Blackberry travels everywhere with me and I find myself answering phone calls in foreign countries, writing emails while on the S-bahn and setting alarm reminders for later in the day, taking pictures on my phone to post on Twitter or recording my own voice as I’m driving down the autobahn and would like to remember an important inspirational point that had risen in my mind. But I’m an old fashioned girl living in a modern world. I like paper and pencils, a tangible book that serves as much as a diary as it does my agenda.

Happy New Years, my readers – may this year shower you in all good things and blessings.

Yours,