Looking Ahead

I'm looking forward to being present, awake, and alive in 2014.  I've adopted a goal of unconditional acceptance and radical self-love, and I don't know if it's the moon and the stars, a supernatural force, or my imagination, but I'm feeling a definite shift in that direction.  My perspective has changed and some of the fog that has surrounded me in the last year or two has lifted.

With the lifting of that fog, I can see that the last year has been even more difficult than I had realized.  I have spent so much time numbing myself and not letting myself feel things.  I've spent so much time chasing after, "The thing," that will make me healthier and happier and whole.  No wonder I spent the year exhausted.  "The thing," doesn't exist outside of myself.  It doesn't come in a pill.  I can't squeeze it out of a vegetable that I grew in the ground, although I sure as hell tried.  (I'm not giving up on healthy eating and exercise, by the way.  Just saying it's not, "The thing.")

I think maybe some people gave up on me in 2013 because I haven't been able to be there for them in the same way I had in the past.  Despite my best efforts to support them, love them, and stay in touch while still doing what I needed to do for myself, I think a couple of them have written me off and moved on.  And you know what?  I've decided that's really okay.  I was feeling so much weight from their expectations, whether they were real or imagined on my part.  Now that the weight of my failure to meet the expectations of others is gone I feel free to move forward.

What needs to go will go.  What needs to come will come.  Welcome 2014!