I have two soaps left from the 80 or so I made for holiday gifts and I just noticed that for some reason, they remind me of breasts. They are in the common shape of jello molds, but to me, they look like boobs. Here. Let me show you.
Is it just me?
That is not how I intended to start this blog entry, but then the boob soaps caught my eye and suddenly, I developed a lack of focus.
It was a delightful Solstice and I am perfectly good with letting it slide into history as a known success. This was a great year as well and I am a little hesitant to let it go because it was just so sweet. I had a number of personal victories, really on all levels, and I cherish each one. I am grateful that life no longer feels like a struggle and that I can evaluate and deal with the challenges individually rather than feeling as though I am in a war with constant attacks.
Things are still hard from time to time, but after a lot of inside work, I am usually able to see the good things around the struggles and not have the hard times become my whole life. I used to get swallowed up by them until that was all that existed for me. Whether or not this kind of compartmentalizing is a good thing remains to be seen. I just know that I am more peaceful and joy is easier to access as a result.
In my spiritual path, we use the return of light to the sky (the “spark”) on Winter Solstice to ignite the spark of inspiration in our minds as to what we want to plant in the coming year. We then “plant” goals at Spring Equinox and harvest the results in the Fall. It works great and is a fabulous focus for positive life-change manifestation. That type of manifestation, both short-term and long-term, makes up the focus of most of the books I have written.
This past year, I planted a new income stream for myself and as a result of some Universal guidance, published my existing three books, plus nine more that I wrote between March and June, on Amazon.com. Print copies followed soon after. I was lucky and the sales took off, so that goal was met.
I planted healthy weight loss and although I lost a good bit of weight, I do not now weigh a lot less than I did when I started. I did, however, learn a lot and made some vital changes in my own head that make me confident in planting the same goal this year, just worded differently. I realized that I’d made a rookie mistake in the wording of my goal. You do not plant things you want to lose, you plant things you want to gain, so I have to gain healthy, strength, and physical fitness. Yep, even the seasoned pros make mistakes.
This coming year, I believe that in addition to that goal, I will plant financial security, four or five more books to write, and a better relationship with myself.
Several of the books I have planned to write and release in 2014 will involve overcoming some of my remaining insecurities and blowing out the dust from some dark corners of my psyche. One is on sexuality. Another is on the low expectations women set for themselves. Another is the sequel to Leaving Kentucky in the Broad Daylight, and will involve writing about some of the most painful periods of my life.
This brings me to the focus of the blog post which is my tendency to want to cry and whine and wail, “Why does it have to be so harrrrrrd???” I do get tired of learning more lessons and constantly having to evolve and do the inner hard work. I feel as though I have not had a break from that in years. That’s why dumb shit like “Wow. Those soaps look like tits” kind of appeals to me on occasion. I am grateful for who I am now and I have never been happier with my self. I guess it is a matter of getting older and having some dance card of lessons to complete before I go, so I am burning bright, but wow, I’m tired.
Often, it feels like every day brings a new list of lessons and personal challenges and subtle upgrades. Up and up and up we climb. Now, I hear myself complaining, “Aren’t we supposed to take the Winter off, Universe??” Then the Universe starts babbling about cocoons and emerging in the Spring and won’t it just be GREAT?” Sigh.
I am thankful for the things that have fallen into place. For this moment, all six of my kids seem to be in a fairly stable place with minimal drama. Finances are not terrible, despite a slight depletion from holiday buying. I have amazing friends and this year, scooped up some more really wonderful ones. I was able to reconnect with some people from my past who were dear to me and who, due to different situations, were out of my life for a while. I work at my dream job, doing what I love to do more than anything. Now that all of the outside stuff is managed, the energy turns inward and I’m my own big project. I’ve gotten the head-space pretty well sorted, so the physical body is the next adventure.
I have already accomplished two of the goals I set up for 2014. I told Eric I would enter a 5K race before Harvest and I did that on Thanksgiving Day. I did not run much, mind you, but I did the full 5K and have walked that particular path several times since then until the snow got bad in that area. I told myself that I would find some way to overcome my fairly desperate fear of dental work and get my teeth fixed. I did and they aren’t movie star quality, but they are healthy now and all of the repairs that need to be done are done as far as I know. I also got some kickin’ narcotics to loop me out while it happened and that was a nice bonus.
My son, David, gave me a beautiful Game of Thrones dragon egg cookie jar and I have decided to fill it with miracles of the year. I already have a few in there. I count each one, even silly ones like my car passing smog and a quick DMV experience. I know it will be full in no time.
Today, I cleaned my house and got it somewhat back to normal after the holiday took hold. I have bins and bins and bins of Solstice decorations and although I love them, I am more attached to how my house looks normally, so I am usually ready to get the decorations packed away as soon as our celebration ends. Eric likes to leave them up until after New Year’s, so I compromise and leave up the tree and put everything else away. I have to pack away my dragons and the monkey altar to put up the Solstice decorations and they both tend to get very crabby if they are packed away for more than a couple of weeks. I also do a good bit of underneath cleaning when I put the regular decor back up again, washing knickknacks and cleaning shelves and pulling down the generous amount of cobwebs in my house. It was a lot of work, but the two main rooms – family room and living room – are done and tomorrow, the dreaded laundry/storage room gets tackled. I hate cleaning. I think I might hate it even more than the average person. Thankfully, I am almost done.
Sort of like this day… almost done.
I hope you have a beautiful end of the year and plenty of happy miracles in 2014.
Blessings and love to you.