#JuWriSoMos Reflections, Week 7
Over the last week I have really reflected on the highlights and themes I have noticed since this challenge began. And I find myself reflecting on the fact that this part of the challenge is aligned with the time of year where I intentionally evaluate what my goals for the last year were and identifying where I want to go next. I usually do this by doing exactly what we’ve done this past week in the #JuWriSomos challenge, though the topic isn’t my writing so much as it is my being and how I showed up in the world this past year. When I designed this challenge, I really didn’t plan for this to line up in this way, but you know that thing I said at the beginning about listening to the whispers before they become screams…
I am really glad that now, at the halfway mark, when I am writing consistently and tuning in to the things that have been keeping me from my writing for the last few years… I am glad that now is the time for noticing where I have been, noticing themes, noticing and enjoying the highlights, noticing where I want to go and the barriers that have been standing in my way. I am glad that this is the time for exactly that.
Do you want to know something super odd about all of this? I mean, when I really think about it, so much has had to line up across the universe in order for me to exist in the first place it should zero surprise me that other things line up too. The other thing that I have noticed that has lined up, is when I do my personal reflection that I do every year at this time, the things that pop up in my writing are the exact same things that are bubbling up for me in the world too. My reason for wanting to write more, for wanting to write the things I have had on my list for over a decade (yes, they are the same things – I looked at old journals to verify!), is directly related to this space I have been walking into and creating around the kind of mark I want to leave on the world.
It’s like all the things are coalescing and have reached a crescendo, and I am directly in that pause between the crescendo and the resolution. That powerful silence, the eye almost, just before the next move happens and everything either comes together beautifully and leaves us with the kind of breathlessness of an incredibly masterful song…or falls apart like a football team that gives the whole game away in the fourth quarter.
No, I am not hiding some terrible dark health secret or anything. This is just part of the natural course of things I think, the struggle in the beginning to plow the fields, ready them for planting, to tend to the crops and weeding out what doesn’t feed them, the beauty of harvest and the stillness of the land once it is barren. The moment before the readying of the ground for the next phase begins.
What I need to do next is to burn the fields and plow in the ashes.
It is time to give up the tired reel that has been playing in my head, break the record once and for all. Use the pieces to make something cute and upcycled, something that reminds me of the lies I used to tell myself only enough to keep me from believing them anymore.
And it is time to lift the next generation. Time shift my presence in order to make space for whoever is following me, and clear the ground so the seeds they plant will have a healthier beginning than I.
Until next week.