Thoughts On the New Year

I am not ready.

I am not ready for 2019 to start. Not ready to be 44 instead of 43.

I am not ready to choose a new WOTY (Word of the Year). Or to say goodbye to what was a pretty crappy year. Or to welcome new possibilities.

I’m sorry, SoulMatters, but I’m not ready to embrace being a people of possibility.

I’m not ready for new beginnings. I haven’t yet told myself the stories of the last endings.

I haven’t shed all of 2018’s tears yet.

The only New Hope I’ve got right now involves lightsabers.

I need to laugh and play and create - 2018 had a significant dearth of those things.

I need to lean into wholeheartedness, invite more laughter and play and joy and faith.

I yearn to explore what faith means to me, a sometime-pagan, mostly-humanist- or- naturalist Universalist.

2018 threw us for some hard knocks. My resilience held up for most of it, but I’m bloody tired. Exhausted. Ready for change.

2019 has to bring a new home. No two ways about it. We’ve got just over half of the income - and more debt - than we expected to have, going into a house search, and it will just have to work out.

I drew an oracle card last night, as the clock ticked towards midnight, for the coming year. The card I drew was Kali, the Hindu goddess, known in popular culture for burning it all down and starting over again. Not a particularly comforting symbol.

I’m no more ready for burning things to the ground and rebuilding them than I am to start this year - but when do we ever have a real choice?