2015: A Year of New Beginnings

I will be saying goodbye to 2014 at one of my favorite restaurants in New London, New Hampshire, the Inn at Pleasant Lake, tonight.  My fiancé and I have been coming to dinner at the Inn with his parents since my first visit in September 2003.  The food is fabulous and the dining experience is unique.  If you ever find yourself in the area, I highly recommend it.  Even after 12 years, the spark has not dimmed on our desire to get to the Inn every time we are in town.  Which has me contemplating the old—rituals, haunts, habits, people, stories, memories, feelings—and the impending and potential new on this New Year’s Eve morning.

Contemplating the old and the new.

I’m not going to lie, I am relieved to see 2014 coming to an end.  It was an incredibly profound, intense, and life changing year.  A year of endings.  A year of death.  2014 will be forever known as the year I said goodbye to My Dad.  I’m deeply grateful for the time and experience I had with him and the lessons I learned, but I’m ready to come back to the land of the living.  I’m ready for a rebirth, a reboot, a fresh start.  I’m ready to let go of the old and make room for a year of new beginnings!  A year of life.

Of course, I have no control over who will live or die in 2015.  I don’t know what life will bring.  I’m in the dark on that front.  Existing in the great unknown.  And if I don’t know anything that can and will happen, that technically means anything is possible.  How delicious is that?

Making space.

I spent the last few weeks cleaning out my closets, my drawers and my files in every neglected nook and cranny in my house in preparation for 2015.  It had been on my “to-do” list for years.  It was a long time coming.  I organized piles of paperwork from back to 2012 and donated bags of clothes and boxes of books.  I let go of my old so it could become someone’s new.  It was liberating.  Exciting.  Now there is room for reinvention, room for the unknown, room for the new…especially clothes.

My heart pounds out of my chest at the thought of a year of new beginnings. A year of new discoveries, new relationships, new creative projects, new outlooks on the old.  I’m going to shake it up this year by NOT making some big declaration of what my plan for the new year is.  How many films I’m going to create or what I’m giving up or doing better or who I’m trying to become.  Nope.  This year, I’m simply ready for a year of new beginnings.  What exactly those new beginnings will be, I don’t know for sure.  But I can’t wait to find out.

So, on the eve of 2015 as we let go of 2014, here’s to contemplating the old and making room for the new.  Anything is possible!  We have a brand new year to create from.

What new beginnings are you going to create in 2015?

Until tomorrow, create from what you have…new beginnings.

Kelli Joan Bennett is a filmmaker, actress, writer, entrepreneur, advocate for creative thinking and Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Think Outside The Box Inside The Box Media.

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