A Beginning

"There are years the ask questions and years that answer."

~ Zora Neale Hurston

Walking beside Central Park

I have this book. I have had it for almost exactly two years. It is a book that I had heard about many years before.

I remember the day I discovered it in a second-hand store while shopping with my mom and the children...

My life was turbulent to say the least.

I felt lost and disconnected with myself and those who are most precious to me. 

Then I found the book. 

                                    Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy

I was ecstatic!  It was only $2... a blessing for me at the time.

I brought it home and dove in, determining to start at January 1 and catch up to the current date...

But this book isn't meant to be powered through... as I quickly discovered. My heart and soul didn't want to be quickly changed. As much as I wanted to find my "authentic self" as the author describes, It can't be done in a couple days. 

Or a couple weeks. 

So I set it reluctantly aside and determined to start it on January 1... which is how the book is written.

Since then I have made several attempts to start the book "right". I will read for a couple days and then miss some so then I have to read a couple extra passages to catch up... Or, like this year, it got packed up because of circumstances beyond my control and I only recently unearthed it.

So I have decided that I am not going to stress about catching up, I am not going to just jump in to the middle either and ignore all the lessons that came before...

I am going to start right now, with January 1. 

Who says my new year has to be with the calendar? All sorts of celebrations mark their beginning at different times of the year. Birthdays, anniversaries, quitting a destructive addiction... 

They all mark a new year.

So this is my new year.

I am starting with January 1.

I can't wait to see where it takes me....

"And now let us welcome the New Year

Full of things that have never been."

~Rainer Maria Rilke