Patrick Brealey

And so here we are: a new year. 2012. The Chi­nese cal­en­dar declares it to be the Year of the Dragon — an ani­mal that is strong, proud and noble but is also known to be impetu­ous and, at times, tyran­ni­cal. Sounds like a bold year to me. When it comes to other cal­en­dars, I’m sure your neigh­bourly con­spir­acy the­o­rist has told you that 2012 is obvi­ously the year of the apoc­a­lypse since the Mayan cal­en­dar appears to end on Decem­ber 21, 2012. Of course, nobody really lis­tens to the Mayan his­tory schol­ars (with all of their “edu­ca­tion”) who state that the Mayan cal­en­dar­mak­ers weren’t proph­esy­ing about the end of the world, but rather the 20 katuns of the 13^th b’ak’tun will have sim­ply run their course as per the Maya Long Count Cal­en­dar and Decem­ber 22, 2012 will mark the begin­ning of the 14^th b’ak’tun. You got it — party time. So it is with the bold­ness of the Dragon and the ris­ing cel­e­bra­tory light of the shift­ing Mayan cal­en­dar that I take the first steps into 2012.

I aim to make 2012 a Year of Focus. Don’t fold into dis­trac­tion. Be bold. Be right­eous. Be…impetuous. I hope that you have imag­ined what your year might look like. Feel free to tell me. Com­ment if you like! Let’s talk!

That being said, I don’t want you to think that 2011 was all wax and beans. It was good too. I learned and grew in ways I didn’t expect. For instance, I became a bet­ter swim­mer. I learned how to breathe prop­erly while doing the front crawl. Sure, some of you may think that’s an easy task but I know there are those of you out there who know what I’m talk­ing about — per­haps you cringe and are slightly embar­rassed that you got through child­hood swim­ming lessons with panic and adren­a­lin, but mas­ter­ing the rela­tion­ship between breath­ing and swim­ming eas­ier than it seems. The key is to relax. Focus. Be calm. When you put you head under­wa­ter remem­ber you will be bring­ing it back out to get more air. No need to panic. Slow down. One breath. Stroke, stroke. One breath. Stroke, stroke. Even­tu­ally, you stop think­ing about what you are doing and it feels as though you are breath­ing under­wa­ter. It begins to feel nat­ural. What I’ve learned is that by focussing on being relaxed I’ve been able to let go of the things that tripped me up pre­vi­ously, which in this case was some­thing as sim­ple as breath­ing. And so I take the bold­ness of the Dragon, the cel­e­bra­tion of the Maya and the relaxed focus of the swim­ming pool and I say, “Come with me, 2012. Let’s dance.”

Be good to your­selves,
Patrick