As a new year begins…

Dear all,

this post was supposed to be published on New Year’s Day and that would make perfect sense. Due to Internet connection issues, I was not able to do so and I also ended up losing part of it… I was about to delete it when I realized every day a new year begins for different people in different parts of the world…

So, here you have the second version of my post for I’ve added some more ideas to it…

“We will open the book.

Its pages are blank.

We are going to put words on them ourselves.

The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year’s Day.”

– Edith Lovejoy Pierce

I came across this quote on New Year’s Eve and I realized it does express how I feel about life and about a new year…

I celebrate lots of New Year’s Day all year long – New Year’s Day, my birthday as my very own New Year’s Day… The truth is I’ve got this thing about celebrating rites of passage and about starting over.

Starting over for me has always meant opening new doors and having new opportunities. When it comes to my career, I’ve started over so many times and I’ll probably do it over and over again. And that has been real amazing as I’ve been able to learn a lot.

I’ll tell you a little bit about my career so that you can picture it out… I’ve already taught adults, teenagers, kids, kids in kindergarten, at a regular school, in different language schools, Business English, English for Specific Purposes, in-company classes, private classes, teachers, college students, and so on. Right now, I’m a teacher, a teacher trainer, an e-moderator and the president of a Teacher’s Association. And I really don’t know what’s going to happen next. And I’m not afraid of it.

Have you ever wondered about all career paths you can take? Reading Mônica Salgado’s editorial in the January 2015 issue of Glamour Magazine has made me reflect a lot about it all. She asks readers three very relevant questions related to choosing a path to follow – “What motivates you?”, “What do you love?”, “What are the things you are willing to put up with in order to do what you love?” So… have you ever thought of it? Well, I’ve spent the whole month going over them and I guess that is why I’m finally able to finish writing this post.

As I said before, I’ve been always keen on writing new chapters in my life. Thus, these are the chapters I’m planning to write this year…

– going back to university

– attending more conferences and presenting more workshops, lectures, talks, and so on

– exercising a little and taking up a new hobby to avoid burnout

– studying more

– writing more

– reading more

– traveling more

– learning more about new things – things not only related to TEFL and Technology & Education but also about love, about motherhood, about cooking, about being a housewife, about life…

– loving more

– learning more about me, being really true to myself, and being me all the time…

I would like to finish this post with another quote I came across on a good friend’s Facebook timeline last week…

“Tomorrow, is the first blank page of a 365 page book. Write a good one.”

– Brad Paisley