I want to start off 2020 with a challenge. Well, I can choose one from any number: my most long-running one would be weight loss – but that’s a ho-hum these days. I’m not my Aunt Vi (whom we described as 5×5) but I’ll no longer strive to shine in hip huggers with a croptop either. I need something more real & perhaps more achievable. My body likes the weight…it’s my brain that scrabbles to a halt mumbling “Wait! Do I really look like that?” But I’m healthy. I walk comfortably. I can bend & move & lift & carry. So if it’s only for the image, perhaps it’s time to just let weight loss go so it really can. Because when I focus on it too much, it overtakes me.

I had a thought this morning of asking what would I place in a time capsule? But will this exercise be a time capsule I’d want to reopen later? Maybe it’s not a time capsule but a time dump of that which no longer serves. What is it about this year I would want to re-address? Friendships, funny events, successes like starting Open Mic & doing stand-up comedy; walking almost every day for seven months; catching moonrise over the notch in the mountains outside; helping host Black Cat Poets on second Sundays… I’d love re-addressing being able to earn my way well, to help others in little/big ways, to find what I need exactly when I need it.

It’s easier to list – and a longer list as well – what I am letting go of. Former friendships which soured for their own unreasons; unsustainable relationships; most of the stupid things I didn’t think were such at the moment. I want to release any feelings of being “picked on” or targeted. I wish I could release judgments about my behaviors when I was wrong which I still find myself twisting crazily to be right about.

If I found a Time Capsule from my future self, what would it contain? Success after success, understanding, more knowledge, less judgment, tones of love & affection, a powerfully grounded belief in my own lovableness, many fewer second thoughts or doubts. Strength of mind, heart, body to continue in a world where there’s so much to disagree upon. (Every generation wants the world to move more slowly & resume some quality it had before. I don’t wish Hershey Bars were still a nickel, but I wish the upcoming generations were not so estranged from what I perceive to be basic & essential points of reality.) But then, I was brought up in the paradigm that “boys will be boys,” etc.

But I also grew up in a time when there were fewer rules, much less assumption of guilt before innocence can be proven, simplicity over that which seems complex but still can be dismantled into essential parts. Since I didn’t have many relatives in the viewfinder, I didn’t hear “when I grew up we…” stories. I kept inside the boundaries set for me just because it didn’t really occur to me that I could escape them with any success. I grew up with a single parent possessing “eyes in the back of her head,” I breathed carefully in the Surveillance State Of Mom before this existed politically out loud. I didn’t worry about Big Brother, but I sure did about what Mom might catch on her radar.

I will think on what is worth saving/continuing. I want to help more, understand my life better, re-establish & deepen my relationship to God, my Hero. I want to love what I write & continue touching others with words. I want to rethink how I live & make a smaller, more loving place in which to dwell in my mind & heart. From that concentration I can once more grow up in the discovery of that which is of true importance: establishing ideals to achieve, deepening my prayer practice, renewing relationships while developing more. I will enjoy filtering out what is not needed, keep from acquiring excess baggage, moving forward in light, tracking time better & believing in & understanding myself more. I like to think I can stand up in “do no harm” in my life & bring about nurturing change.

There is always more room for less fear.

2020: clear vision to us all!

Love,

Carol