Words

In March of last year, about 5 months after my major breakup, I decided that I was ready to start dating again.  I had gotten past my initial euphoria at leaving a bad relationship, allowed myself to grieve the good parts, and reached the point where I felt okay with being single.  I was ready.

As I was getting back into dating, I distinctly remember thinking about how good a mental space I was in.  I felt like I had worked through a lot of my old demons (anxiety, self doubt) and kind of figured things out.  I understood shit.  I can even remember, in one particularly arrogant moment, thinking that I had learned most of the big things in life and really didn't have that much more to learn.

(Cue deep laughter from the universe.)

In my last post of an unsuccessful NaBloPoMo, I wrote somewhat glibly about starting to meditate, completely diminishing the magnitude of the impact it has had on me.  On one level, it has done what I expected it to:  made me appreciate the present moment more, helped lower anxiety, and improved my always inconsistent sleep.  What I completely didn't expect was the deeper changes it has brought about*.

Through meditation, I am learning to see everything more clearly.  I am getting more comfortable with difficult things and learning to sit with them so that I can understand them better.  Habits, thought patterns, relationships.  The last half of this year feels like a veritable explosion of self understanding and personal change.  Far more has happened than I can possibly capture in a single New Year's post.

It became popular a few years ago to choose a word for the year as a way of setting an intention, and while I didn't do it at the beginning of 2018, in retrospect, my word for the year was clearly growth.

And what for 2019?  Mostly, I want to keep going on the path that I'm already on.  I want to remain in the present moment, enjoying it when I can and learning from it when I can't. 

2019 is going to be all about mindfulness.

*This whole post feels so hokey, and if I'd read someone else's version of it a year ago, I'm sure I would have rolled my eyes and accused the writer of having drunk the magical kombucha.