I was all set to write about how Per Aspera Ad Astra is my phrase of the year – to with “seek”, my word of the year. While I don’t think I have necessarily navigated hardship, as the phrase indicates, this speaks to me because of the shift from the negative, the hardships (to whatever degree we all face them) and the shift to reaching for the stars. Moving towards the positive – finding the good and celebrating it.

It’s astonishing how, when you land on an idea or word or thought that becomes your guide / intention, how you start to see it everywhere.

And, in honor of Mary Oliver, who died yesterday (1/17/2019), I realized that one of her poems speaks directly to this intention of mine for 2019. What better way to honor her and celebrate her, than to read and savor these words? She brought so much light into the world – I can only hope that I am able to reflect just a tiny bit of it in my own life.

2018 turned out to be a pretty darn good year. Looking back, and reading all of the end-of-year surveys and comprehensive lists of what people did / read / experienced, I realized that my 2018 was right up there in the good ones.

• I started a job that I really, really love, in a location that I enjoy more everyday. 
• I did not move. This is HUGE for me, as I have moved more times than I can count in my adult life. Seriously, I needed extra pages for my FBI background checks for different jobs. 
• I got rid of a lot of clutter and crap. Cleaning out feels so good – and holding on to things “just in case” or because of a vague memory, well, I found out that does not work for me. And that’s okay!
• Donated a lot of that stuff (which was actually in pretty good shape, not “crap”…) 
• Made some work friends. Some of whom might, eventually, become out-of-work friends. 
• Read.  A lot. I actually set a Goodreads goal for 2019 of 20 books – my first reading challenge! – and I really hope I blow it out of the water. Of course, that means that I have to actually record the books I read! 
• Journaled. A lot. 
• Started this blog. 
• Kept connecting in unexpected ways with others. 
• Meditated nearly every day (she writes, on a day she did not meditate…). 
• Put my TV in the closet. 
• Submitted a really big grant. 
• Went to Maine for 2 weeks. 
• Went to Hawaii for 8 days. 
• Saw my parents twice, as well as my extra-parents. 
• Napped more than I have. 
• Tried a bunch of new things – Pilates, new foods – and enjoyed most of them. 
• Started my journey back to being me. 

More and more I have come to admire resilience.

Not the simple resistance of a pillow, whose foam

returns over and over to the same shape, but the sinuous

tenacity of a tree: finding the light newly blocked on one side,

it turns in another. A blind intelligence, true.

But out of such persistence arose turtles, rivers,

mitochondria, figs — all this resinous, unretractable earth.

I saw this posted on Instagram by Maria Popova, the founder, writer, and curator behind BrainPickings. Her work is amazing – she published a book last year – and her insights often bring me to new thoughts at just the right time. While not all of the newsletters speak to me, most of them do, and I look forward to her twice-weekly emails for the ideas and thoughts they generate for me.

I finally did the “trendy” thing and chose a word for the year – and for 2019, it’s going to be

Seek.

I toyed with the idea of grow, again. (I’ve used that in the past.)
Explore was also up there.
But exploration, while it can be used to describe what I call “inner work”, seems more focused on external explorations.

Seeking can be internal, external, spiritual, physical, emotional… I can seek adventure, but I can also seek positive relationships for where I am now in life.
I can seek a community, spiritual growth, new ideas, new knowledge.

And Jane Hirshfield’s poem highlights, for me, how I want to focus my life, and my seeking, this year.

I want to become more resilient, more tenacious, more persistent.
I don’t want to always hew to the path that I’ve chosen – sometimes, seeking, and resilience, tenacity and persistence require a new approach, a twist and a turn here and there.
But always, moving forward.
Seeking. Maybe not the way I anticipated doing so at the beginning, but still moving and driving and growing.

I love the line “…the sinuous tenacity of a tree”

Perhaps I’m not sinuous, necessarily, but tenacity? that I have.
We’ll see what my path – my branches? – look like at the end of 2019. Who knows what the new year will bring? Time to seek…and know. 

The present moment is the only one that matters…We have the choice to let go of worrying about the past, and instead, focus on the present, and the things we do have the ability to change.

Letting go isn’t about having the courage to release the past, it’s about having the wisdom to embrace the present. Steve Narbone

Try some healthy idleness… JJ (Family Friend)

Idleness – the active choice NOT to do – is really hard. I always have to be going, going, going. Sometimes, though, I get what I consider to be a signal from the Universe that maybe it’s time to take a break. Slow down.

I know that it’s a cliche to slow down in the winter. To take advantage of shorter days, longer nights, colder temperatures. But this year, it is oh so tempting to disconnect. To take the time to breathe. When I think back on all the insanity of the past 3 years – two moves, three jobs, lots of upheaval in relationships and life – it makes me think that if I don’t disconnect, I will be forced to… whether by illness, or some unanticipated significant event.

So, perhaps I won’t work a full day Monday (New Year’s Eve). Maybe tomorrow I’ll take the time to do my (fun) errands, enjoy a lunch with my mother in law, and take a nap. Because you know what? It’s okay, sometimes, to just sit. It’s okay to stare out the window without a purpose. It’s okay to NOT follow a set schedule or list of tasks all the time.

Healthy Idleness. What a concept…