The Reflective Power of Foresight

Today is my birthday. I love birthdays - a celebration for the sake of appreciating the existence of a human on this earth in our lives as they are. To me, that is such a beautiful expression of love. It is on this precipice of another year of my own existence that I try to look forward to the year of my life ahead and see where I want to go, what’s coming up, and how I want to show up in the coming year. In order to look forward, I have to reflect on how I’ve arrived at my present. I often find that by looking ahead and planning for the future it becomes a practice of self reflection and expanding awareness. 

Join me as I attempt to set out my wants for the coming year by exploring what I’ve already cultivated in my life to help me get there. 

This year I want to experience peace in my life through my cultivated practice of grace.

I have had a year of newness, firsts, and turmoil; stepping away from my career, having our first child and becoming am om, the changes that have taken place in our marriage as a result, and the shifting of myself as I make room for all of these new experiences and requirements in this phase of life. Because of the exciting newness of this past year there has been little time for carving out peace in it. However, my work on cultivating grace not only for my creative practice but for taking life as it comes and enjoying smaller moments will serve me well in turning toward an era of peace this year. By employing grace, especially as I attempt to re-enter my career as a new mom, I will have a greater chance of success in settling into peace. Grace leaves room for failings, it accepts and cradles vulnerability. Grace creates space from productivity and expectation; it makes space for peace to enter and stay a while.  

This year I want to have reliable creative output built by honouring my exploration of routine. 

Over the past four years, if we do not go back too far, I have been both exceptionally driven, and definitely lack luster in the department of reliable output here in the blog space, not to mention the on and off editing and drafting my fiction work receives. While I want to honour the ebbs and flows of creativity in my life and the waves of life that sometimes pull us away from our creativity  I want to bring more focus and dedication to my creative ventures. I have done copious amounts of work around structure, flexibility, and schedules, all cultivating a reverence of routine. I know this will change again when I go back to work and will take some time to develop a routine that works for myself and my family, however I also know that until this creativity becomes a staple in a routine it will continue to be more reliably sporadic than consistent. 

This year I want cozy delight to permeate my life through my dedication to curated consumption.

I have begun to lean into coziness. I want delight to light up my day everyday. A little whimsy here, a dash of laughter there. Life always comes with challenges, commitments, serious pursuits, and responsibilities, but in what we consume, in what we spend our time taking in we can choose to cultivate cozy delight. In my reading, consisting of my own choices and those recommended to me by my delightful friends, I am steering more towards cozy fantasy, delightful banter, and light, though that does not mean little substance, novels. In addition I have been strategically choosing pieces of art, board games, and nick knacks that appear throughout my home to evoke a sense of warmth and charm. I love a good rousing game with intensity, stakes, and competition, as we all do in my family, but I am also drawn to cozy beautiful board games, games with whimsy and delight instead of strategy.  

These intentions for this coming year, these trajectories I set for myself are all in an attempt to navigate into a more fully realized, authentically loud version of myself, that my life may be full and free and me.