Closing the Door and Cutting the Ribbon: Closing Ceremonies for 2020 and Opening Ceremonies for 2021

You know, I love Halloween, I love secular Christmas, but maybe it might be true that my truly favorite holiday is the New Year. I need the time of pause between Christmas and the New Year. I need the reflection of looking back. I need quiet time for deep consideration of values and roots prior to the leaning forward. 

So I want to share several sources I'm tapping into for my own reflection, intention-setting, and rhythm-creation moving forward.

Opening ceremonies & closing ceremonies episode at The Lazy Genius podcast - I'm loving the idea that I can create opening & closing ceremonies, which is language I've adopted from the Lazy Genius. The concept of Lazy Genius is about being a Genius about the things that matter TO YOU and Lazy about that things that DO NOT MATTER TO YOU. I love that on both ends. I'm giving myself even more permission and time to close 2020 for myself and to create a way to open 2021 that feels good to me.

Power & Healing - Conversation for Igniting a Communal Practice of Radical Rest and Healing with Rev. angel Kyodo williams, Dr. Joi Lewis, Dr. Leticia Nieto and Resmaa Menakem - I am listening to this and find it so valuable (you can donate to Movement Voter Fund's Georgia Fund and get a link to the video). It centers the Black-led lineage of practice of rest as a source of healing -- "Justice is our healing and our rest" -- such as The Nap Bishop and the Nap Ministry which says rest is resistance against capitalism and white supremacy. (Did you know you can call the Nap Ministry's Luv Naps hotline to hear a new message every Tuesday? 1-833-LUV-NAPS -- and you can support the Nap Bishop Tricia Hersey on Patreon here) And, in the Power & Healing conversation you can sing with Dr. Leticia Nieto!

Year Compass - from the website: YearCompass is a free booklet that helps you reflect on the year and plan the next one. With a set of carefully selected questions and exercises, YearCompass helps you uncover your own patterns and design the ideal year for yourself. This year's includes a Pandemic Supplement focused on three specific areas: confronting the loss of control, taking stock of the profoundly changed daily life, and assessing the health of your social circle. This was shared in a Facebook group I'm in. I like the look-back that is the basis and beginning of this reflection and planning tool.

New Year Planning Guide from Mariposa Strategies, with great reflection questions, which you can download and start when you're ready. - Buy the creator Annie Sanchez a coffee here "to keep the work fueled and scrappy!" This was also shared in a Facebook group I'm in. I am going to use it as an iterative tool for reflection and planning. 

I use the Passion Planner, which has free downloadable Road Map and Reflection worksheets here which are also in the printed planners. I love the monthly reflection as one element of a rhythm of regular reflection and choicefulness. Passion Planner also shares this blog post on Mindful Passion Planner Ideas: How to Use Memory Planning to Positively Impact Your Mental Health  

I participated in a vision board workshop with Taina M. Brown and uncovered 5 values I think I want to be grounded in for 2021. I have some ideas about using moon phases and earth cycles (which are both reflected in this beautiful calendar I have just put up on my wall) to create consistent rhythms that help me be present with myself, to check in with myself in connection with natural cycles. I'm not sharing any specifics on any of this because it's in a larval phase and will likely shift both before and during the New Year. 

 

Small Stone January 1

I'm doing this Mindful Writing Challenge this month. I'm going to write a "small stone" every day of January and post them here, and that way I'll practice writing and blogging! I'm excited. Here's my first small stone:

Small Stone January 1

New Year's Day walk all by myself... out past the barns, up and down over little hills I can't see til they're right in front of me. Grey sky, white and brown speckled fields, even the pine trees seem grey today. The only sound my feet trudging through snow. When I am still, I can hear the mmmmmm and hhhhhhhhh of far away cars. My mind can wander with no one to call Mama and summon me back to my duties of love.  Ten minutes of footsteps take me far away.  

Seven gloss-free ways to be happier in 2013

In the grocery store I was drawn to my favorite glossy women's magazine, which promised advice on “ways to be happier” in the coming year. I didn't buy it. At this point I know that this magazine consists almost exclusively of lists of lists, with the same advice over and over in different permutations.

I'm pretty sure I'm just as qualified to offer advice as anyone who publishes them on glossy paper. So, here you are: my advice to myself and the three other people who might read this, looking ahead to the new year.

Muddle through. 

Deal with stuff directly, even--especially--the stuff that scares you. Have those conversations you dread or feel anxious--and don't expect yourself to do it perfectly. Too many hours of preparation can just increase your anxiety or mean that you never get around to the actual conversation! And don't expect yourself to take a sharp turn in a relationship or fix it all in that one conversation. Just take one little step to deal with what's in front of you.

Know your bottom lines and be honest, but start with questions and listening. This, I think, is the basic advice of a book recommended to me by a friend who knows some of the challenges I had this year, Difficult Conversations. I think this is the advice because I haven't gotten past the first chapter yet. But it's my advice to myself anyway, for quick prep.

getting started

I'm doing it! I'm hopping into the blogosphere after thinking about it, experimenting, and of course researching. Now it's official.

I've just been reading all about how and why to start a blog. Step 1: set goals--what do I want out of my blog in 1 year, 3 years, 5 years? Step 2: know my audience. Step 3: be consistent.

Well, I am thinking of blogging for several reasons: as a place to exercise and sharpen my writing skills in my own voice, where I don't have to be "on message" work; as a place to exercise and sharpen my analysis skills on issues and topics I care about; as a way to stay in touch with people I'd like to talk to more (although that's really up to them, if the way I do it is just by writing); and as a way to explore and go on the record about topics and issues that matter to me: feminism, social justice, anti-racism, parenting, partnering, working motherhood, social justice organizing, transformational education, natural birth, pregnancy and birth education as a transformational experience, food as a connection to the earth, earth-based spirituality, the end of the world ['s social and economic power arrangement] as we know it. It's also a creative outlet and I hope I can use it to connect various forms of my creative expression: crochet, cooking, sewing, photos and how they're displayed/shared, words and images on clothing, and maybe others that could develop. I want to connect with others who share those interests and I want to share resources when I have them. I want to explore possibilities for future work in areas I'm passionate about. And I hope it won't be too burdensome or difficult to maintain appropriate boundaries between this blog, my work life, and my personal life. These are my initial goals. Plus, I would not at all mind even a minor supplemental income. How's that for lofty?

Thinking of "my audience" takes some imagining. Me, my close friends, my family. Other organizers, birth fans, parents, feminists, crafters, pagans.

Be consistent? Is it gonna matter if I have more than 1, more than 3, more than 5 interests that I write about? It's all connected as far as I'm concerned. It will be good discipline and practice to make those threads appropriately explicit to tie it together for those who may read. And I have no idea at this point of how frequently I'll be able to write and post. As mama to the toddler monster, free time is freakin' scarce. Is once a month just too lame to bother? Good thing my audience is me!

Well, I'm all full of creative energy right now and it feels good. We'll have to see what happens next.