It's A Wonderful Life - My 2018 Reflections

At midnight on any New Year, my parents would always cry out, happy new year and then they would open our rusting steel framed windows to let the old spirit of the year out and the allow new spirit in.

I can remember standing there looking for something that would be leaving and entering. I loved it. It felt like a moment of magic taking place. I couldn’t see anything but could feel it. That’s exactly how I feel about this year and the new year to come. I can feel the magic coming and it is so real I can almost see it, touch it and smell it.

And of course, 2018 wonderful year of change.

I was getting bored with certain things like business and after 33-years working for myself, you can understand why. So, 2018 began with an idea of doing less, feeling more and creating new experiences in our life.

After many conversations that led to selling most of what we had, letting our wonderful house go, buying a one-way plane ticket and living abroad in Tbilisi for 5-months with n agenda to stay or leave. We just wanted to be – I wanted to just BE THERE.

In Tbilisi, I created many things, spent time doing and rediscovering my joinery skills, building walls and other things, renovating the Georgian homes that we rent out, improving my Georgian language skills and of course overdosing on strong coffee and traditional and local foods.

Also, there were two even more important and new things in my life this year.

The first, is my current best-selling book, The Salon Punk. The book I just didn't want to write. I have been writing this book for years and fought to do it. I finally got it written and published. Now, incredibly, it’s a best seller.

The second more important thing, after climbing mountains with reversing a 15-year old vasectomy with 3.5-hour microsurgery and then the gruelling hormone packed IVF treatments x 3 we finally arrived at a point where my new child with my darling wife Tamuna finally arrived into her womb with its next stop planet earth on April 2019.

To know I will become a father again at my age is something no words can explain in strong enough emotion here. I feel overwhelmed to know my experience of life keeps expanding and is part of an overall continuum that is nothing short of amazing.

And then back to England triumphant, not start again but to continue the journey of life with a fresher perspective after a 5-month period doing anything apart what I would usually do every day.

Now we are in our new home in Cheshire’s Golden Triangle with freshened perspectives and a new focus for the next part of this thing called life. There have been a lot of changes this year. Some big, some small, some exhilarating, some breath-taking and some creating floods of tears and hours of laughter Its life, a life lived and experienced to the full.

Living that life has led me to a point where I had realisations of other things. These other things have led me to a place where 2019 feels exciting, fresh, energised and activated. My mental goals are loosely set and I am working hard on my new novel and a new philosophy book.

Best of all, April 2019, my beautiful darling wife Tamuna will be handing over to me our new child, our little darling baby. This new creation will give me drive into more creativity and even fresher perspectives on a life that confuse to twist and change directions.

And of course, for 2019, more eccentricity, more love, more giving and more way above and beyond what is usual.

2019 I am ready so from me to you, feel inspired to live a life on your terms, question everything, reason on everything, ask why more often, let go and don’t be held be the past.

Tomorrow is your future, another day, another minute, another second for you to move forward and create what you really want in your life.

A Very Happy New Year to you.

Alan & Tamuna Forrest Smith (and baby)