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A few of the blogs I read have recently mentioned Ali Edward’s One Little Word concept. Each year, Ali chooses a word for the year. What is this word for? In her words:
“You live with it. You invite it into you life. You let it speak to you. You might even follow where it leads. There are so many possibilities”
I’ve been thinking about my word for 2011 and one that keeps cropping up is FREE.
2010 was a pretty tough awful year for me, despite the outward smiles. I want to be free of that past year, and feel the freedom that 2011 will bring.
Free to me means being at liberty, spontaneous and easy. I am looking forward to my year of FREE.
January - Kayaked & tramped the Abel Tasman, tripped around the Westcoast, and camped at Holdsworth
February - we glammed up for a wedding, and I crewed for a media team at Coast to Coast
March - my beloved Granny passed away after a long struggle. I locked myself in a room in Rotorua & wrote my award entry in her memory. I am smiling, but my eyes are sad - I think this picture says a lot
April - a weekend of wine tasting in Martinborough and seeing the Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra perform
May - visited the bestie in Brisbane, met up with girls I went to school with when I was 14 and hadn't seen since (nothing has changed!), and won Young Practitioner of the Year (for Granny)
June - Spent the month gallivanting around Greece and sailing through the Greek Islands - on the Mamma Mia tour 😉
July - I turned 26. Emily came to stay and we had a ragey night out on the town
August - we visited Staglands, Maranui cafe, had a Wellington Day Out and went to Parliament! I also started this blog 🙂
September - I sat my APR exams, we went to Otaki beach for a blow out and I completed my Learn Something New Every Day Album
October - I passed my exams (yay!), went to Somes Island, went camping at Catchpool Valley and caught the Overlander to Auckland for my brother's 21st
November - Graduation! Also the month of moving out of our house and selling up large
December - a trip to NYC, time spent with Mina, Christmas parties and ended with family and friends at the beach. Byebye 2010!
Goodbye 2010 - Hello 2011
For those that have been wondering – the exam went ok. As good as can be expected. I feel ‘ok-bordering-on-good’ about it. The questions in the written part were all ones that I had studied for, and nothing that I hadn’t. My stomach didn’t lurch when I read them – in fact I smiled in relief.
The 3 hours went so fast, and seeing as there were only 5 of us in the room the atmosphere was pretty laid back. We were allowed to listen to our iPods – turned out that the two of us who were listening to music both had Enya going!
Then I had to undertake the Viva Voce – imagine the hardest job interview in front of a panel of 3 senior practitioners. Yikes. I barely had time to get nervous as I was up 15mins after the written exam ended. But I think it went ok. The panel were friendly, they asked some tough and curly questions, but I think I was able to answer most of it. I did witter on a bit in some questions, but tried to keep it short and sharp for the most part.
I came out and felt like a huge weight had lifted off my shoulders! I celebrated by enjoying bubbles with the other candidates; then dinner and dessert out with Jase.
The results don’t come out until 26 October, so until then I am just going to sit back and relax and enjoy having a life that doesn’t involve textbooks!
Goal number 1 – complete 🙂
I was brainstorming with Jase about what to name my blog – and he said “Well, that’s easy – you have to name it Chandelier!”
The name Chandelier was something that my good friend Shannon and I came up with a few years ago. Both of us work in PR, and were out for brunch one day (Malt Bar, Grey Lynn – YUM) and joked that if we ever started a PR company together we should call it Chandelier PR…Shan-de-Leah! Brilliant (well we thought so!). I could immediatly see great business logos and expensive crystals hanging from our office ceiling. Of course, I managed to kill the moment by saying “I SO need to write that down, in case we forget”…to which Shan said “Um Leah, we can’t really forget it…it’s our NAMES”.
True.
So while there is no Shan right now (the lucky thing is jetsetting overseas), the name has stuck a bit, and hence the Chandeleah.
I asked Jase why he thought Chandelier suited my new blog – he replied “it just suits you – Chandeliers are expensive, exquisite, classy, glittery, eye catching, precious, refined, beautiful, the centrepiece – and centre of attention – just like you”. AWW. That was enough. I. Was. Sold.
Chandeleah it was.
🙂 L
I have been pondering the blog idea for a while now…and finally am getting one up and running, thanks to a little bit of inspiration from my dear friend missnat and a class from Shimelle. I plan to use this as a space to share what is new with me, my likes and loves, my travels and a wee bit of my favourite hobby – Scrapbooking.
I know you are wondering about the the name I have chosen – Chandeleah. Don’t worry – a wee explanation will come soon.
In the meantime, bear with me as I get the hang of this! Exciting!
xxL
Chandeleah 