Happy Solstice!
I’d like to say there wasn’t much of a better time to start this venture than the Solstice, but really, it all just lined up to be ready today.
First up…what I’m letting go of and what I’m inviting in for the next year.
I’ve spent my life reflecting on who I am, why I’m here, how I feel, and why I am the way that I am. Seems to be the right time to finally get some of that out into the void.
So, here we are at the Solstice. A time for letting go of that which doesn’t serve us, and grounding what we hope to embody in the year ahead. I’ve never been a New Year’s party person, but I’ve always been a resolution person. And not so much in the ‘achieve X goal’ way, but more in the reflective, what did I love about this year? What didn’t I love? What do I want to change?
I was with a lovely group of people in 2016 when celebrating the Solstice, as opposed to the Gregorian New Year, was introduced to me. Self-understanding has been my path, from the time I can remember, and embracing a time like the Solstice for setting intentions is right up my alley.
So, shall we?
Sunrise, March 14, 2020
I had sent in my first pitch and then left to catch the sunrise. That pitch would be my first published article, “How Social Distancing Has Made My Social Anxiety Worse”
What I’m Letting Go Of (…I hope)
Perfectionism. Complacency.
I hate the word perfectionist. My supervisor in college was the first to call me that and while he was phenomenal, I hated him for using that word. I wasn’t a perfectionist; I simply did things right. I was thorough and detailed and meticulous.
Fast forward to therapy eight years later, and he called out the same thing. I didn’t want to accept that word as my own. I wasn’t a perfectionist; I just liked to do things well. “Half-ass it” has never been a belief I subscribe to.
But therapy doesn’t let you get away with not facing the thing, and so I slowly started to work with the word, reframing it as best I can. Now, I begrudgingly accept that I am a perfectionist, and more importantly, I recognize it’s one of the roadblocks that I’ve put in my own way of my dreams.
No one else will notice if something I do isn’t perfect. Others will give me grace for any mistakes or blunders I make. I have proof of this, and yet it’s still so hard for me to do the things I want to do because ‘there’s no way it’ll be perfect.’
Which makes me complacent. My dream is to be known for my words, but I’m so worried that my creations aren’t perfect, that I fall back onto “what I have now is enough, and I don’t need anymore”. Thankfully, Maslow is pretty much taken care of, and if I keep doing what I’m doing, it’ll continue that way. So, it’s enough, right?
Except I know what I have now is not what I want for the rest of my life…which requires me to actively pursue my dreams. It requires me to follow through.
What I’m Grounding
Follow through.
I have initiated so many projects, I could never tally them all up. I have pages and pages written with my deepest and most honest thoughts, that I could post every day for a year and still have more drafts to pull from. I have so many creations started, but none of them are completed. And that doesn’t include the list of ideas I have that I haven’t drafted yet.
So, my hope for this next year is to bring in ‘follow through.’ With my ideas, I want to not only draft them, I want to revise them, and I want to finalize them. I want to break through my perfectionism and my complacency. I want to, for the first time in my life, share, share, and share. All of the thoughts swirling in my head no longer fit in my journals, my poems, my unpublished articles and novels. There are too many and they are too big. They need to be out in the world.
So here, on this Solstice day, is my first step in following through.
How about you?
What are you letting go of for this coming year? And what are you bringing in?
Colleen
