Today is January 1, 2023. I’ve spent the day with my love. We woke up at 6, but I went back to bed after coffee and slept another couple hours. We’ve spent the day reading, playing, cleaning. If only every day could be so simple and pleasurable.
We spent yesterday evening talking about our plans and dreams for this year. We did a couple card reads with our gentle tarot decks (we each have one, we don’t share cards). And the reading was good and sparked so much conversation between us. Life is good.
This is a spiral spread, starting with the Ace of Wands.
I’m determined to make 2023 a good year insofar as that is within my control. That’s one of the many reasons that I chose Sparkle as my word of the year, a practice that I’ve done so long I can’t quite figure out how long I’ve been doing it. Sparkle means a lot of things for me, but most of all that I don’t want to let anything dull my sparkle. Now I do an additional practice: choosing 5 Ways of Being for the new year, a practice I picked up from doing Holiday Council with Molly Mahar, my favorite life coach (this is my third year doing it).
My Ways of Being for 2023:
I am RADICAL in my care and love of self and in all my ways.
I am WILD. I am free. I am messy. I am untamed.
I am CREATRIX. I bring worlds into being with words.
I am SACRED. Connected to spirit and rooted in ritual, I live out my life as a divine being and prophet.
I am UNAFRAID. The universe has good things planned for me and I am unafraid.
I chose these after a lot of thought, going through words others had chosen, and really looking at who I want to be in 2023. Radical was an obvious choice to pair with a year that I’m going to focus on self-care. Wild I loved so much last year that I kept it for another year. Creatrix speaks to one of my goals (see below), but also to who I see myself as—someone who creates as a way of being. Sacred and Unafraid speak more to who I want to be than who I am in this moment.
In Holiday Council, we also choose 3 big goals. I add smaller goals, too, because it helps me personally. Here are my goals:
BIG THREE:
1. Be someone who practices radical self care in body, soul, and resources.
a. BODY: increase movement, decrease pain
-work towards 5 miles by end of the year
-wear CPAP every night
b. SOUL:
-Have a daily spiritual practice
-go to Mass regularly
-journal daily
c. RESOURCES:
-spending fast
-budget and stick to it
-adapt my time management to meet new needs
2. Be a writer
-regular blog posts
-complete a manuscript in 2023
3. Be wildly minimalistic
-declutter everything and don’t leave anything in storage
Smaller goals:
4. Sunday check ins with myself every week
5. Go to the Woods
6. See Dora, Mark, and Heidi
7. Go on a retreat
8. Go Glamping with Mason
9. Get a tattoo (an annual goal—I try to get one every year)
10. Make all HoCo Calls (a quarterly meeting)
11. Read 36 books
Why am I sharing all this with you? Because I need accountability. I need support. I need someone to fucking teach me how to budget. And I want to share that Holiday Council, which usually runs in December, is open still until the end of January. I highly recommend it. Molly’s company, Stratejoy, has probably saved my life through HoCo and Reclamation. I’ve met some of my closest friends through those programs and I find myself well supported with community and love because of them.
2023 is going to be a big year. I can’t speak yet of all the changes coming down the pipeline, but there’s the potential for radical, wild change. And I am here for it.
What are your themes, ways of being, and goals for the year?