Finally the clocked ticked over and we have escaped 2022! Which feels a lot like a mere continuation of escaping 2020, so I’m not making any collective prognostications for this year…anyway, Keely’s not impressed:
As most of you know, I decided to do a two-day spiritual retreat to ring in the new year. It started at 12 noon on Friday the 30th and as I write this I’m an hour and half from 12 noon on Sunday the 1st. I went into it with full-body commitment: put phone on “do not disturb” (not “off” because I use it for a lot of things like reading fic and listening to audiobooks), logged out of socmed, and chose not to engage with current events (I did check the news headlines once per day just to make sure I was not missing out on WWIII or anything). I spent the time reading my beloved spiritual texts, meditating for hours, napping, cleaning, fasting, taking magnesium baths before bed, and taking Keely for a LOT of walks (which she loved, except for when it was raining!).
It was so very insightful and while I’m not ready to share fully what I experienced and the insights I have from it, I am full-throated saying it was a magical time filled with transcendence. There is always more self-work to do, of course, but I feel like I have been readying for this leap for a while.
This morning as I let Keely pull me around, we enjoyed cool (58°F) temps but high (98%) humidity, so we were wrung out by the time I dragged her home after nearly an hour and half of meandering. It was calm and quiet out, since there was no morning commuter traffic, but more than a few people were taking a nice walk around Lake Ella to bring in the new year.
(And just to update: the holiday decorations never went up around Lake Ella. Such a mystery. I wonder when they will take down the braces they installed back in November to hold the decorations. Weird.)
I hope everyone had a wonderful New Year’s celebration/close-out/sleep! Thanks for staying here with Keely and I through all these years!