2025
My Favorite Scene from Northern Exposure
As I reset for a New Year, I am amazed at the choices! I hope this is partially an increasing comfort with the flexibility needed to age with some degree of grace. The past while has seemed full of angst about health changes. I am learning (with some degree of resistance) that finding satisfaction and setting goals is a very fluid reality! Now I prioritize efforts that can easily accommodate “down days” and my increasing desire for peace. Sometimes this means choosing less stimulating activities,,, less noise, motion, and visual distraction. I am not a multi-task person though I remember some skill at that in the distant past. I shall focus on one thing at a time with intention.
I wrote a book last year called The Art of Contentment: Creating a Life of Happiness and Satisfaction. It captured a lot of my beliefs and values. As often happens with my writing, it leads the way forward…the actual next steps I want or need to take! I know, for me, that ideas come first often channeled from sources unknown. I shall adopt some ways of being from my book.
I have felt a bit scattered and find myself grazing too briefly on many areas of interest, particularly my passion for the arts. Sometimes this feels like I am avoiding the deeper dive that, while ultimately soulful, requires some struggle and surrender. I think health challenges, where you fight to regain lost function, can lead to not only anxiety about “letting go” of control but also a habit of cruising superficially…always on guard for what might suddenly create chaos! I shall surrender to creativity and trust my safety is there.
I know I spend too much time inside. It has dampened my strength, my sense of spirit and my energy. The pattern became habit with illness. Now, I am not falling down and my vision is clear. My garden, my horse, fresh air…they ground me. These are my places of worship. They are direct intersections for me with kairos and the sacred. I will celebrate my time in nature for strength, reflection, and centering in a creator greater than all to whom I express honor.
Too often the internal critique gets loud and steers me off course. It can be crippling and extremely harmful to my sense of self-value. I would hope to bring my best to everything I choose or that chooses me…and for this I require rest, internal affirmation, and stillness. This I know. Gentleness is the guide. I will be my own best friend.
I hope I will always have the capacity to learn and listen in each moment. I have been blessed with triumph and devastation in cinemasize and in the smallest detail. While I still block on some of this experience, I know I am incorporating more and more to weave a tapestry of wisdom and resilience. I will be open to learning.
And then there are the tools that sustain and nourish me. I will take my medicine, drink more water, get a good night’s sleep. and write.
