I'm pretty sure it's not bombastic to say that NY resolutions are loads of shite, but looking back at the last cycle and setting intention for next is good practice in my opinion. Without doing so,
I risk that I'lll just be at the mercy of the vagaries of life rather than mastering my own course.
This was apparent in a glaring way this last year. On 1/1/19 I was ensconsed (I thought) within a new career path, enjoying my first six months living inside after a half decade of houselessness, but had not set my intentions. I was resting on some rather sparse, dry and readily burned laurels.
Moving into my own place, all I knew I wanted was to lock the door. After living in a fishbowl for so long, and going through so much in there- getting clean, losing both my parents and my two best friends, and being unable to greive any of it, I unintentionally isolated.
So, my job contract expired in May and instead if moving into another position I was laid off. I believe it was for a few reasons, the biggest being a misunderstanding by my employer and coworkers about what methadone is-and working with a homeless population that was something I was very open about, and the fact that I was isolating, and not allowing anyone to connect with me so that when the schtuff hit the fan, there was nobody there to help or who even knew what was happening.
My taxes went to my defaulted student debt, and since I expected to pay June rent with that, I had to move back into the street on MY 50TH BIRTHDAY to avoid being evicted. Not good, but I've been kicked in the teeth a few times and I persevered and instead of falling into self destructive blaming behavior, spent a few months licking my wounds and figuring out an understanding of what happened. Instead of running from them, I leaned deep into the feelings so that I could get up, and set intention that will lead me on a clear path out of hell to where I want to be. And asked for help.
I have been able finally to access my unemployment insurance, and just moved back inside last week, and am looking forward to this coming year as a time to come to a certain mastery of living my particular life.
To this end, I thought I'd share my process with y'all in case you find this useful for your own. I create and visualize a 'pentacle' (ohhh, witchy!) with five points, from top clockwise- spiritual, mental, physical, professional and social and identify concrete goals within each. I'm not going to go into my personal goals too much, but here's a couple: in the social area, I want to be less reactive, more open and understanding of others in order to create new and strengthen any meaningful relationship with others I have in my life. This has been a big problem for me for a long time as a unipolar, recovering addict with PTSD and crazy worldviews kind of dude.
As for spirit, I want to reach higher levels of initiation and come into IRL contact with others to work with. Work: make lots of money selling art...
But yeah, insert vision joke here...
I have long term goals, so I'll not focus on tactics, but on strategy for how to live the life which I have just begun. Shoot for the galaxies, even if you miss, you'll land among the stars.
