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Be Ready

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Does anyone make New Year’s resolutions these days? Or is it just the olders who have gotten wiser, let those magnificent opportunities for failure go? (Maybe we are the only generation who ever did.) Some are really good—drink more water, stop scrolling social media, get more exercise—but who needs the pressure of “resolve”? Some of us have changed to softer “intentions,” providing an awareness of needs or wants, resolutions with no-guilt permission to blow it off. Others have a word for the year. I’ve had a few of those.

To be sure, if you do any of those (resolutions, intentions, word for the year), and it works to keep you motivated, yay you!

For the past several years, though, I have engaged in a more meditative practice: Tarot. My good friend Joanna Powell Colbert, created a deck that feeds my soul. Each year on the winter solstice, I draw five cards and see what they have to say to me about the year past. Or, more accurately, what I have to say for myself inspired by the cards. A question is offered for each card, but sometimes I just listen for them to speak to me. On New Year’s Day, I do a seven-card spread with questions to ponder about the new year. 



As is pretty much always the case, this season’s practices blew me away with the resonance with my life and the insight they inspired.

The solstice practice led me from acknowledging my contentment with relative solitude, to inviting me to ask what I need now and what is keeping me from it, and on to what might I have to let go of to reach a new thing? Because, of course, we can’t live all the lives. 



The new year spread led to this: Be ready. 

Call it a resolution. Call it an intention. Call it a word for the year. Call it inspiration. (Call it a kick in the butt.)



I’m not an astrology practitioner, but I do know Geminis are curious, and they love variety. They also struggle with indecisiveness. So me! I’m also a nine on the Enneagram: the Peacemaker. Sounds good, right? It’s a whole lot like Gemini: receptive, and also complacent. Everything sounds like a good plan. “You decide.” But when you are a solo, there is no “you.”



Like many of us in the third act of life, I’ve been thinking for a good time about where I want to be as I advance toward the inevitable years of changing health and function. Aging at home”—if that means the house I currently live in—is not an option. I’m not sorry. I’ve moved my home eleven times since I migrated across the country in 1976, returning in 2012. I’m good with change. But what? where? when? I’m ready to move to the next adventure. I want to stay near my hiking trails, and sunrises from my home. I’m restless. I’m stuck. Gemini /Peacemaker. 



The cards have offered me the task for this year: Be ready. 



I don’t have make a decision on what, where, or when. (Back off, Gemini/Peacemaker.) Be ready gives me the opportunity to make a list and check off items. (I like that.) Return to cleaning out the house of my parents’ belongings and my own. Complete end-of-life business. Get the house appraised and inspected, property lines confirmed. Get someone to look at the septic tank status, instead of just worrying about it. Pick up again pondering where I want to go and allow myself to dream without the “I can’ts” I tend to put on fantasies. I’ve got this.

Also, buy an orange toaster because color makes me happy. Goodness knows, we could all use some happy right now.


 

“We don’t have to have it all figured out or know exactly where we’re going. We just need to trust in the journey and stay open to the surprises along the way.” —Barbara Brown Taylor


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I  would love to hear from you! Do you set goals for the new year? What are your longings? What holds you back? What urges you forward? Leave a comment below.

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The Gaian Tarot Three of Earth card, the one I think of as the community card, and which inspired the name I gave my family home (and Airbnb) several years ago—Three of Earth Farm—was drawn on the Solstice as my “companion card for the year ahead.” And in the new year spread as “hidden concern.” Gemini. Peacemaker. The internal battle continues, but I recognize the need for connections in these times. I wonder, what longings call to you?

Meet the creator, Joanna Powell Colbert, at JoannaPowellColbert.com. 

 

 

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The New Year: Aging Out, or Aging In?

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At the beginning of every new year, my in-box is full of bucket list and intentions posts. I’m thinking about mine. Or, rather, I’m thinking about not thinking about them.

 

Two Sunday bloggers were in my lineup last week, and they got me considering this third act of life—which is not a new thing, obviously. One writer (I’ll call her Ms. Energy) is nearing 50. I won’t detail all she does, you would be ready to nap well into spring just reading it. The other (a friend of Ms. Energy, I’ll call him Mr. Ancient) is turning 60, sandwiched between me and Ms. Energy, twelve years on either side. I’m well past feeling remorse that I can’t channel Ms. Energy (not that I ever could), but it turns out Mr. Ancient has something to teach the more elder me about what I do—or don’t—want.

 

He writes this: “I have projects I want to complete, and I even have visions to learn new art forms . . . but I don’t want to live my final days to the staccato rhythms of the Urgent. It just doesn’t sound like much fun, for one. I want to pause and meander and savor and wonder and drift.” (I want a bumper sticker that says that.)

 

This is me with my mouth hanging open. Is that okay? Can one let go of feeling, at the not-yet-old-age of 72 (much less at 60), that shit must get done tout de suite before it’s too late? It’s not too late, but by the time it gets done—or let go of—might I have missed the window of opportunity to “pause and meander and savor and wonder and drift” because I am, I don’t know, dealing with health stuff or the end of democracy or whatever? Did we buy into this sense of urgency and “must do” when we were younger and now our arthritic fingers have it in a literal death grip?

 

Bucket lists (a little different from annual intentions) are defined as life lists, things to check off before one dies; but mine have always been serial. I replace things rather than add to the list. My bucket list used to include Eat Pasta and Pizza in Positano. I let go of that with no regrets, replacing it with “Visit ALL Western National Parks.” I’ve revised that to visit some national parks. Currently, I’m thinking about taking the Coast Starlight to visit a friend in California next autumn, and maybe getting into Death Valley, which I missed in 2023. That could add a park and replace bucket-listed Take Train Trip Across Canada.

 

But couldn’t bucket lists and annual intentions also (or alternatively) include “write a letter to a friend,” “savor the sunrise,” “consider the shades of brown in tree bark.” You know, downsizing the lists. Last week I drove 90 minutes out my favorite state highway to the historic hotel I love, walked the labyrinth at the wildlife refuge again, and sat by the fire and read, returning home for dinner. Going there every autumn/winter is on my bucket list. For now. I might try snowshoe meadow roving (my volunteer gig at Mt. Rainier), or not.

 

A recent epiphany pertains to the tendinitis/arthritis in my left hand (well, and my right). I spent months in 2023 winding through the medical maze: primary care doctor so I could waitlist to see an orthopedist so I could get referred for occupational therapy. A year after eight OT sessions, my hand is no better. I was panicked back then, “Oh my gawd, this is how it will be, this aging thing. Must Fix Now.” Today, I am not panicked; this is how it will be. I’ve adjusted. Not everything can or must be fixed.

 

Mr. Ancient writes at the end of his post: ”I don’t want to battle age, but stir it around, bathe in it. All of Time’s orneriness asks for celebration, acceptance, not resistance. Acceptance can be its own type of celebration. Loss can be its own song. And therein lie the gains of this peculiar state.” Don’t you love that?

 

That’s what I want to be doing in this act, both this year and this decade: celebrating, not arming for battle. Paying attention to the small things, letting go of the big ones. No tick tock. I’m turning off the clock.

 

Disclaimer: I’m trying this on for size. If it doesn’t fit, I’ll put it in the back of the drawer and take it out when I grow into it. Because, really, isn’t that the joy of elderhood, the freedom to try on ways of being in the world?

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What are you trying on for size in this new year? Or, what are you aging out of and/or into?

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Read Grant Faulkner’s (Mr. Ancient) post here.
Read my post “Lessons from a Labyrinth” here.

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Book recommendations (there’s a theme here, right?):

Still: The Art of Noticing, by Mary Jo Hoffman. This title caught my attention, I have it on library hold. “Every day (every single day) for over a decade, Mary Jo Hoffman has made a photograph of found nature – no subject too small or too ordinary.”

Still Life at Eighty: The Next Interesting Thing, by Abigail Thomas. Currently reading, laughing out loud.

I’m excited about the coming audio version of Mother Lode, from Tantor Media! Coming in May.
I’ll keep you posted.

 

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