2013 to 2014: yay, Ritual & Nerdery!

Welcome, welcome, 2014!

FINALLY I have some time to indulge in my favorite tasks of the new year -- a pox upon mid-week holidays! a blight upon no-time-off! 

Finally, it's time for New Year's Ritual & Nerdery!

First Up: 2013 Books!

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2013: here I come!

I made a big mistake in agreeing to work today -- December 31st, 2012.  What I really wish I were going to do, instead of heading to my soon-to-be-old job and working in the quiet of an empty, holiday office, is sitting with my Leonie Dawson 2013 Incredible Life planner and my 2012 black Moleskine and my new 2013 blue Ecosystem planner and dreaming about the coming year.

After Christmas, this is my most favorite time of the year: this Resolution time, this Plan-ful time.

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Day 7: almost there

Smoothie 7? Check!

OK, so as I mentioned elsewhere, this was a tough morning, one on which I nearly caved and made myself a delectable slice of toast.  Which would be completely absurd considering that I'm almost done, have almost completed this 7-day body cleanse de-tox that I embarked on last Saturday with the wonderful Dr. Kate Tenney, ND.  How silly would that be, to bail when the finish line is in sight?  It's really amazing how many rationalizations my little brain came up with, one after another, reasons why it really doesn't matter one way or the other which day it is, etc., etc., and you know you're just going back to the wheat-teat anyway, just get it over with.

Reminded me of this, by Peter Bregman, on why it's hard to keep resolutions.  It's not the motivation.  We generally have that in spades.  It's follow-through.  It's not letting our brains derail us.  Like mine almost did this morning.

I'm not going to lie. With the end so near, the oh-fuck-it voice was the loudest.  But instead of reaching for my beloved Dave's Killer Bread when I opened the freezer, instead it was the frozen mixed berries, of which I had just enough left for this morning's smoothie.  And because, honestly, at this point the taste of the so-called Medical Food is something I'm so over, yes, I threw a banana in there.  And then wondered, while drinking down its deliciousness, whether that was really so different after all than caving in to the bread.

Look, the list of things I've learned from this 7-day experience is long.  I think finally the whole food pH thing has really sunk in to a bone-level with me, something I've been resisting ever since Crazy Loretta (my former eyebrow technician) became its chief apostle about 10 years ago.  [Come to think of it, Crazy Loretta has been on the cusp on a lot of health issues, not just the pH, but she was the first person I ever heard talk about green juice, loaned me books years and years ago on the subject.   Hmmmm, crazy but prescient? Interesting.  But still crazy.]  Also, I have a new and deep appreciation for how sweet actual food can be, like aforementioned banana.  An apple?  Completely candy sweet.  So good.  And of all the things I've been craving -- toast, steak, toast, butter, cream in my  coffee -- note that sugar hasn't come up once.  No chocolate?  That's nuts!  I thought I couldn't live without it and now look at me, doing just fine.

I'm not sure what I will do tomorrow, how I will return to the Land of the Eating.  I do not, DO NOT, want to have become a fussy eater who says No to everything and has to bring her own food everywhere and is on some stringent impossible plan.  But I do want more greens on my plate and I want to stay plugged in to this awareness of how my food feels once I've eaten it.  That's just so precious.  And hard-won.

Oh, and I want some chicken.  Let's be clear about that.

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by jove, i've got it: 2012 is the Year of ...

Apparently it's not enough to lay out a two-page Chart for each new year.  Maybe it used to be enough, but then it growed.  A few years ago a theme emerged when I reviewed all the items in each labeled section.  Then, thanks to Laura Christensen, the Chart grew a sutra, too, a short easily-memorized phrase that summed it all up for me, that when repeated would bring me back, in an instant, to the whole point of it all. So, last year's pithy little sutra, summing up The Year of Discernment, was Say No, Say Yes.  Easy-peasy and kept me on point.  So a two-page Chart and a theme and a sutra.

But now it seems the year has grown a goddess, too, something I was completely not expecting, something I would have resisted had I had the opportunity.

Two days ago, after days of working on this year's plans, thinking and waiting and watching it all take form, suddenly a realization bonked me frying pan-style on the head, leaving me like a cartoon, little spinny wheels in place of my eyes, stars dancing over my head. Boing-oing-oing.  I was in the woods, hiking with Mr Burns, in that place where I do my best thinking, surrounded by all that green and texture and the sounds of squirrels chattering in the trees.  Something clicked.  Oooooh, that's what that's all about?

Listen: if you think years of practicing yoga doesn't change you, you're mistaken.  It gets inside you and does its thing even when you're unaware of it, and then shows itself in unexpected and delightful ways. That's what makes it seem like magic.  For reals.

So, suddenly two days ago the lightbulb went on and I realized that I was entering Year Three of a three-year cycle.  I had absolutely no idea I was in a three-year cycle, but as soon as I knew what the theme of this year was going to be, then I remembered the Navaratri workshop with Douglas Brooks and Sianna Sherman last September, and boy oh boy, did it all fall into place.  [Navaratri is a 9-day Hindu festival dedicated, three days each, to the goddesses Kali/Durga, Lakshmi and Saraswati, really one goddess fractalized into three, three ways of looking at reality, three stories that star you and me.]

Kind of spooky.  Check it out.

2010: Durga

2010 was the year of Durga for me, my self-proclaimed Year of Intention. I stuck a big image of her on my red Moleskin and carried her everywhere I went, riding her tiger, wielding her weapons to cut down obstacles and bullshit in my path, to free myself at last from a situation I had been stuck in too long.  It was a powerful and ferocious year, in which I said Yes to so much.  By the end I was exhausted, but also jubilant: I had found the courage to give up safety for something more beautiful.  And yes, I was exhausted, bone-tired and ready for the big change I'd created for myself, to a simpler, less crazy life.

2011: Lakshmi

2011 was for me, as above, the Year of Discernment.  My notebook bore the image of my favorite animal, the wolverine, symbol of wildness and innate strength, my signifier to myself that there was no more need to wield a bristling bundle of weapons 'cause I had it all built in.  All I had to do now, now that I'd cut the head off the demon, was get clear.  Where would I draw the lines?  Where would I devote my time, my energy, my passion?  Until two mornings ago, I hadn't thought of Lakshmi ever in connection to that year, because I hadn't realized yet the final piece, the theme for 2012.  But once 2012 popped into my head, I knew it.  I returned to my notes, I saw these words and breathed, "Lakshmi invites you to the greatness of your creative potential, to turn your klesas [wounds] into lakshmis [boons]." It was her all along -- the year in which I realized with a jolt that I am a creative person trapped in a barely-creative profession, the year I grew my writing, the year in which I simplified everything, eliminated everything unnecessary, washed away everything until only gleaming little nuggets were left in the pan.  And with these in hand, I step into 2012.

2012: Saraswati

In all my musings, my dreaming of the year and my constant interviewing of Joe, getting his input on our shared plans, asking him about his own goals and my own, what came up over and over again as an overarching theme for this year for me as for him is "making things nice, making things beautiful."  While it may seem like fixing up the office at the shop or upgrading the website or finally getting a cushion for the window seat at home are disparate To Do items, they all support a general theme of shri, or beauty, of making our lives more beautiful.    They share something essential with my goal of stepping more fully into my writing this year -- more self-expression this year, in short: more art.  And if it was intention and Durga in 2010, and discernment and Lakshmi in 2011, then boom, if it's shri then it's got to Saraswati in 2012-- and getting down to the business of knowing what our lives are for and making them as beautiful an expression of who we are as we can.  

2012: The Year of Shri!

With so much gratitude to all my teachers, to my sister and Yogateau, and to the countless friends who make my world shine with joy: get ready, this year is going to be SO good!  

The Sutra, you ask? 

Shri. It. Up!

Resolutions, shared, more powerful

Woody Guthrie's resolutions for 1942 have been making the rounds for a few weeks. In case you didn't see them, they go like this.  I love that they're handwritten, along with doodles, at the middle of the book, and include beating fascism and wearing clean clothes.

It got me to thinking about how interesting it would be to see certain people's resolutions at key moments in their lives.  These people wouldn't necessarily know at the moment they wrote their resolutions that the coming year would turn out to be key, but with the benefit of hindsight, we'd all go, Duuuuuude, that was so prescient.  Like, for example, if Rosa Parks had it as a resolution in 1954 to change up her seat on the bus.  I'm making light of a huge thing she did, in fun, just to illustrate what I'm talking about.

I did a very fast search on Amazon and nothing turned up, so a book of resolutions hasn't been done yet.  Who wants to take that on?  Of course, it's now on my List of all the books I wish I had time to write, but until someone decides that they want to sponsor me so that I can devote myself 24/7 to this and other projects such as my field guide to the American Douche, then this blog is about it.

So, given my interest in reading other people's resolutions, natch I was very intrigued when I received email from Daily Candy earlier today, with the following tease:

It was definitely a let-down that clicking through just lands one on a slide-show of things the editors plan to buy this year to support their resolutions (although I won't lie: there are a couple of items that I fell immediately in love with, like the magnetic egg-cup train and the self-publishing kiosk and the espresso machine).  But still I liked this smidgen of insight.  Like I wrote elsewhere, I love hearing about other people's resolutions -- such a quick hit of what that person really cares about, really wants, like you're mainlining their essence for a sec.  

The Harvard Business Review blogger Peter Bregman had a really interesting bit in an interview that I listened to yesterday, about how most people don't keep their resolutions because  their fear of failure prevents them from making resolutions about the things they really, really care about.  Like you don't want to make a resolution that "this is the year I write my novel," because if you fail, then it means you're not really a writer.  And that scares you.  So you don't make that resolution; instead you resolve something that doesn't go straight to your heart, to your idea of who you really are, like the novel does.  Instead you resolve something about not biting your nails or being friendlier to strangers.  Something you don't really care about and which you can let go, in a few weeks, when your favorite show finally comes back on or whatever.

The key to success, Bregman says, is to make resolutions about things you really do care about.  And then to keep those resolutions right in front of your nose, integrating them into what you do every day, so that they don't exist in a separate dimension apart from your daily transactions.

For me, another key is sharing what your resolutions are, so that you're more accountable.  Saying them out loud makes them more powerful, give them form.  Volume gives them volume, ho ho ho.  But I'm kind of a weirdo who dreams of friendships in which we share things like this, things like our resolutions for the year, and then have lunch once a month and talk about how it's going.  That's my idea of dreamy: a Saturday lunch with friends and notebooks, maybe a glass of something sparkly and a tasty plate of food, listening and cheering and dreaming.  That would be sweet, indeed, and so real, so much better than catching up on details, details we can all read about on-line anyway.

As I'm completing my resolutions project for this year, I'm really taking Bregman's words into account -- really making sure that I am resolving about things that truly matter to me, that have the potential to be life-changing.  Sure, there's always the nest-egg resolution but what about the rest, the really juicy stuff?  What about the book?  What about getting paid to write?  

It's about keeping the map on the dashboard, just staying focused on what you really want.  And who doesn't need help with that?  By sometime in the middle of next week, I'll be posting my resolutions here, as a way of giving them volume.  And if you want to email me your list, I'm so your Resolution Buddy.  

Let's Go Big this year.  It's time.

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