Destination Unknown

It's almost time to set out on the next leg of my great adventure!  Do I even know where I am going here?  Yes, I think I do.  Or more like, I know where I want to go, I just don't know if or when I will get there, and I am doing my best to try to figure out how.  

It's hard for me to operate this way.  I get all excited about stuff.  I go down a path and then I kind of forget where I am heading.  Focus.  I'm sure if you have been reading this blog for any length of time you have picked up on this.  The cycles.  The waves of excitement.  Jumping in but never getting very deep.  Always going to pick up and finish what I started.  Then the next shiny thing comes along and I am chasing it and I get lost in the weeds.  I forget where the heck I am going.  Trust me, I am aware.  So I get up and start again, and again and again and again.

This blog itself has been a lesson in starting over.  How many times have I come back to reinvent this platform, or myself, or both?  You may not feel like going back and counting, but I can tell you that it is more than a few times.  

But I am still here, and I thank you for that, and I am happy about just being here and showing up on a regular basis whether my platform has a cohesive messaging or not.  I talk about what's on my mind.  I talk about what's on my heart.  I am a woman with a wide variety of interests.  I have as many dreams as a youthful schoolgirl.  I have as many visions as a gypsy seer.  But all of my life, and you know this, I have struggled with seeing (what feels like) any of them FULLY come to life.  I seem to only get so far and then never seem to be able to make them go where I want them to go.  Why?  I can't understand why?

I seem to always get just so far, then something (distracting, devastating, life) happens.  It's just like there is this invisible, impossible wall that I can't get through and I can't get over.  It's too dangerous to go under so most of the time I just try to go around.  But what happens is that I end up feeling like I am going around and around in circles.  Hence the starting over, again and again and again.  God how I love a fresh start, but one of these days I would like to see the finish line.  I would LOVE to cross it.

And today, I do know where I want to go.  I have all the maps in front of me.  I even have the car loaded to the brim; I just haven't quite yet figured out exactly how to get there.  So, I am setting off on another adventure, with the hope that this time it will take me farther.  Hoping that I will get, not just closer to breaking through, but that I will actually DO it.  I'll break the fucking wall or chains or whatever the hell it is that I feel attached to me like a dead weight.  Entropy, lack of focus, confusion, too many options, directions, feeling scattered.  Feeling overwhelmed.  Spinning wheels.  Getting caught in the technological, digital swamps, sucking up all my time and energy.  Necessary evils.  Face them, battle them, win and move forward.  Roar! 😉

That's partly why I think I am so attracted to The 12-Week Year goal achieving philosophy.  I know, I know, another plan, another cycle, another rathole, but I really appreciate the psychology behind their strategy which really makes sense to my overflowing creative mind.  Besides, something has to work some time. (Can be read as: If I throw enough shit, something has got to stick.  Either that or I will just be dirty and smell awful, but who's really looking?)  

All kidding aside, I am trying to do this logically and consistently and learn along the way, trial and error, scientific method, if you will.  And I have been learning a lot, and I have a lot to apply, but I need to Occam's Razor it and keep it as simple and clear and concise for me as I can.  I need to keep it doable and manageable.  In fact, I think I am going to do it one better, since I am really feeling the pressure to get some things done here.  I am going to break up my twelve weeks into 4-week (monthly) containers for the next 12 weeks.  Month 1 (August) is A3: Art, Acadia, Alignment.  

But what is IT that I intend to DO, you ask?  I'm going to implement the strategies outlined in my The 12-Week Year book, it's packed up and ready for my trip, along with everything I need to go back and refer to in order to get my art sales up and moving.  I'm going to MAKE EACH DAY COUNT, hyper focusing on the main art goals that I set last month utilizing the strategies of The 4-Hour Work Week.  I'm going to immerse myself in nature to align my spirit with my mission at hand (artwork audience growth), creating new artwork daily that is inspired by and reflects the beauty and the essence of our planet and its powerful, life-enhancing, majestic soul.  But Acadia is going to have to wait a bit.  

What I was hoping to rush up and do right away, will need to be on the back end of my trip, at the end of August.  No campsites available until late in the month.  So, I will get my reservations made, and I will wait.  But I will wait on the coast of North Carolina, in the valleys of Virginia, in the mountains of West Virginia and while I'm at it I will see a bit of Vermont and New Hampshire.  I'd really like to see Niagra Falls since I will be this far north, but that might need to wait, as will my trip out West, but only for a little while.

Good things come to those who wait they tell you.  Patience is a virtue, so they say.   Who are they anyway?  Never mind that.  Who am I?  That's what makes a difference in my life.  It's what I'm telling myself that matters.  Figuring it out is what makes me stronger.  Finding out is all part of the adventure.

I don't know exactly how or when this adventure is going to end, but that's largely what makes it an adventure, right?  The "not knowing" is part of what builds resilience and aptitude.  The inability to see the future and know exactly what lies ahead is what requires small and large leaps of faith to move forward.  However, it is not without any sense of intuition that I proceed into the unknown.  My "sensors" and my senses are being trained, honed, developed into valuable navigation tools.  The emergence of these gifts requires trusting myself and the compass and the knowing that lies within.  It all just takes practice, which can seem uncertain, it can seem scary and sometimes it just makes me seem all wrong about everything, until that thing happens that reaffirms my doubts, and I forgive myself for being a beginner in life, and I allow myself to begin again...wherever the road less traveled is leading me.