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Word

I did something slightly different this past year and chose both a word and also a tagline to go with it. Torrent: guard your flow. I did not manage to write about it as I was busy living it, but at year's end I'm sitting back down to see where it took me.

This past year has been a ride. I feel like I can safely say that I am a completely different person now than I was a year ago, even more so than usual. There were forks I chose to take as well as wild rapids that I was slurped away on, but I'm at peace with where I've come to.

I've completely reenvisioned my spiritual practices and discovered new community and new ways of being. I've taken my approach to home and family and recreated them from the ground up. I've embraced and become public about my own queerness. I feel like, perhaps for the first time since childhood, I am approaching a new year fully myself - and that is a wonderful feeling. To know that my values, my actions, and my habits are all mine, not something that was given to or forced upon me externally.

For the coming year, I'm reclaiming a long lost insouciance with manifest. I don't mean that in a spiritual bypassing or toxic positivity way - that was just the best single word I could find to embrace setting my own path.

As per usual, I'm sure it will do its own thing. I may choose the path, but I'm not the one who made it, nor did I build the roadside attractions along the way. But I plan to approach all of them with confident optimism, believing that what is best will be what works out, even if the end result is different than I expected.

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