Why I went to bed at 9:30 on New Years Eve.

Know that feeling, like when you are hungry but you don’t really how hungry until you take that first bite?

Or when you are tired, but you don’t really notice until you sit down? Well, that summed up my holiday! Lol!

After a wonderful and transformative year, I stopped, stretched out my legs, put my feet up, and yawned. A good yawn. I disconnected with an extremely minimal use of social media and extended it to a refreshing “nothing but old-fashioned holiday cards in the mail” experience.

*Side note: (I apologize for not writing cards this year, when I sprained my hand I decided no cards…but you were all in my heart)

I flopped onto the couch like a soft little puddle, slept in late, my office transformed into a messy painting studio and stayed like that for days and days. I saw family, and did those things I had put off, like shopping for the new glasses (from my computer, of course).

It was cold, and it felt nice and cozy to be inside looking out – with no agenda.
Yup, it felt good. Maybe too good. Halfway through I got a little worried.

Will I want to stay like this forever?

Then it comes…a familiar rustling…a restlessness…

Like a butterfly ready to emerge from her narrow cocoon.

I start to really miss my peeps; “How are they doing? What are they up to?”
Up bubbles the impulse to create. I feel that deep desire to connect, to expand. To speak. To write. And so, the first thing I want to do…is to write to YOU!

Ahhh…there it is!

While I thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to do hide myself away in my studio to paint and indulge in a lot of “doing nothing” – doing nothing gets well…tiresome.

When you do meaningful work – “soul-work” – it drives you. It comes a-creepin’ back in, shove-shove, nudge-nudge. “It’s time.” It doesn’t feel heavy. It doesn’t feel like an obligation. It feels like…creativity.

Another yawn and a stretch

Easing my way back into the waking world. This time, it’s an “okay, I’m ready stretch.” Like the natural impulse of the furry creatures to hibernate and then come out and play.

Unlike the bears and squirrels, however, the enthusiasm doesn’t come because of a season, or because the year has a new number. Not at all.

You know, as the years go on, the marking of a New Calendar Year means less and less to me. It feels quite random, quite arbitrary and man-made. It comes with a strong sense of obligation, “because everybody else is doing it.”

I get way more excited and joyful about things like the annual Perseid meteor shower. Or even a bright full moon.

Your time is any time

Most importantly, I have learned that at any moment you can have a New Year. It could be 1:30 am on a Wednesday in June, or 10 am on a Sunday in September.

At ANY TIME you can you can decide – decide that anything is possible, do more of the work you REALLY want to do, declare who you are and what you want. Be more YOU and share your awesomeness with the world. Live the life you dream of.

At any moment you can begin; you can create your New Year. Your New Life.
You can decide to simply let go, too.

It’s funny how simple it is, and yet how crowded by fear and thoughts of “what everybody else is doing and thinking” that we fail to see the simplicity of it.

And so…unencumbered by society’s norms, comfortable in the knowledge that I am pursuing lifelong goals and that it is all one big journey, filled with ebbs and flows, I listened to my heart and nestled into the loveliness of an early sleep.
9:30 pm to be precise.

With love,
XOXO
Sarena 🙂