The Coming Year

With Bride's Day and Candlemas, my New Year, coming up, I've been looking back at the last, a year of change.  It was a year of starting new things, of revelation and contemplation, of moves and reorganization.  A year of flux.

And I consider the coming year, what is in store, what I can expect, where my focus will be.

I don't really do New Years resolutions, regardless of what New Year I'm talking about.  But having some areas to focus on throughout the year is always a good thing.  Here are the areas I am planning on focusing.

Being more open and authentic to who I am.

This affects many areas of my life.  A lot of the time, I hide parts of myself because I'm not sure how people will respond to them.  Not because I think they will judge me, nor that they would be upset at me, but because I am afraid it would hurt them or disturb them, that they would worry or not know how to handle it.  So I lock off parts of my life based on possible issues revealing them could cause.  Which, in trying to avoid hurting people often hurts me or ends up hurting them anyway, likely in ways that telling them never would.

This doesn't just mean over all, it also means in the moment.  There are parts of me that change, cycles and shifts.  These aren't constant, they are fluid.  Being open and authentic doesn't just mean being such to the stable, static aspects (though nothing is really static, just the life cycles of them are much longer), but to the changing, dynamic aspects as well.

This also doesn't mean telling everyone everything.  I'm focusing on avoiding hiding parts of me, avoiding not being true to who I am, but that doesn't mean I need to advertise and promote it either.  That is no more authentic than the hiding is.  The goal is a general shift to hiding less and being more open and true.  Of giving others the chance to accept who I am instead of taking that from them.

Understand my own cycles.

To do this, an important part is understanding those cycles.  I spent much of the last two years working to understand the cycles of the land, the seasons, the moons.  Now I need to add to that an understanding of my own cycles, those of my body, my mind, my souls.  How do I change with time?  What cycles exist?  Are they regular or are the influenced by outside things?  I need to know me before I can be true, authentic, and open about it.  I have a fair understanding of myself, of the various aspects, of what changes and what stays basically the same.  But I know these things in the moment, not how I get to them, what patterns exist in the shifts.  It's time to identify these.

Learning to be an oral storyteller.

I have many stories I know, enough to fill several lifetimes of telling, and more keep coming.  As Lorekeeper, I keeper the lore I am given and am responsible for getting it to those that need to hear it.  I'm a decent writer, I think, and good at crafting stories.  But presenting them to others orally, not so much.  I can speak, I can share, but I don't have the skills to bring them alive.

This year, I'm going to focus on developing those skills.  Learn what those skills are.  Learn how to learn to use them.  Learn how to use them.  Practice and hone them.  It won't be finished in a year obviously, but I can begin the journey, I can actively pursue it, I can make choices that will bring it to me.

Hone my skills at and determine if I can start doing readings for others.

I've found over the last year I'm decent at doing readings, not just for myself, but also for others.  I've used readings to determine what people need, and present that in a form they can relate to.  I don't know if I could make money with it or not, or if I could do it actively enough to make it a thing I do, whether I'm paid or not.  This year, I want to focus on honing my skills at it in relation to others, as most of my experience is for myself, and look into what directions it can take beyond what I do now, whether it could be a business or a community service, whether there are other related areas or techniques I need to learn, and what form it might take in whatever direction I take it.

Just as understanding my cycles relates to being authentic, this relates to storytelling.  For reading for someone else is essentially telling the story.  I can say all I want, this card typically means this, and in this position it usually means this, but a reading is so much more meaningful if you bring it to life.  It's fortunetelling, not fortune-analyzing.  I'm good at the analytical side, it's time to learn the telling side.

Additionally, I want to practice dowsing more in the coming year.  I re-awoke it this last year after not doing it since my father taught me as a child.  Now I need to practice and hone it.  And to determine what uses I can put it to for others, whether pro bono or for money.

So, four areas:

Authenticity

Understanding Personal Cycles

Storytelling

Fortunetelling

We'll see where this all leads and its effect on the rest of my practice, life, and future.

FFF,

~Muninn's Kiss