First Word: It is a clean slate, not a blank one

There is not a definite thought of what I want to do or what I would like to happen or not happen to me in 2013. You could rightly say I’m going into 2013 blind, with a blank slate. This was throwing me in a panic, until a friend of mine said to me that I could instead think of it as a clean, and not a blank, slate! And I liked the sound of that!

A new slate without baggage from the previous year to weigh me down. A clean slate on which, each day of the year, I can write whatever, from where I’m coming from to where I’m going. Do you see why I like the sound of this better? A clean slate gives me a more comfortable feeling than blank slate, which comes off as a lack of focus, disorientation, confusion.... Probably because I know for a fact that none of these applies to my state of mind as I enter this year for I actually do have plans, plans only for work, for the Full Woman magazine that I’m so excited about this year.

So maybe, the panic was from not having definite plans for my personal life. But it is all good because if I can have my work in order, I shall figure all those other things out eventually. It is after all at my work station that I spend the better hours of each of my days. And it is how these hours go that ultimately determine what mood I’m taking on to my other lives.

I therefore feel better about how I’m entering the year, satisfied with my only resolution of blowing your mind with what I’m yet to deliver to you in this magazine. A year we are starting off by seeking out the women that have made it to politics in Parliament at tender ages of as low as in their 20s, in our main feature in this first issue of 2013. For you mourning 2012 because maybe there were more losses than gains, we say to you in our lifestyle story, pick yourself up, dust off, learn from those losses and move on, as each new year presents you with new opportunities to succeed at what you may have failed at.

As for me, I borrow Benjamin Franklin’s words for the first writing on my clean slate: Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbours, and let each new year find you a better man. Now this should have most of my bases covered!

I am ready for 2013; ride with me!

erukundo@ug.nationmedia.com