I love January, and the chance it offers us all for a clean slate and new beginnings, but as this month’s feature story with Sonya Yelder illustrates, you don’t have to wait for a certain date, or month, or year, to make a change.
What you need is passion.
During our chat, Yelder told me about a conversation she’d once had with fellow restaurant owner and friend Wayne Hooker, owner of the popular downtown Springfield Cajun eatery, Chef Wayne’s Big Mamou.
“Wayne said ‘You have always had the entrepreneurial spirit; I don’t know why you don’t open something. Of everybody, that’s you’,” she recalled.
She may not have acted on that advice right away, but it stoked the fire of her simmering desires. And when the time was right, she took the chance.
I guess that’s the key to embracing change, deciding to take a chance.
Maybe that’s what makes the clean slate of January so appealing as a time to make changes.
And also, what makes it to hard to stick with the changes we all vow to make with our New Year’s Resolutions.
After all, leaving the familiar behind is hard.
But some changes are not as threatening. I hope those of you who might have “resolved” to find out more about your personal history this year – or received one of those much-advertised DNA tests as a holiday gift – find some useful tips in this month’s Three Big Questions feature with genealogy expert Dave Robison. As president of the Western Mass. Genealogical Society – and owner of Old Bones Genealogy of New England – he’s got plenty of experience in tracing family trees.
Robison has plenty of tips on how to turn that connections report into useful information that can set you on the path to hunting for your personal history. Happy researching!
Thanks for reading,
Debbie Gardner
debbieg@thereminder.com
