From clutter to Shine...

Ever have a place you once loved to be, suddenly seem stale and uninviting? Or maybe it wasn't a sudden thing...maybe you had heard the whispers but tried to ignore them....

The time has finally come to leave this place.  I've plotted this day for some time now, trying it out in my mind, imagining how it will be....

I thought of doing a runner...stealing away like a thief in the night, locking it down behind me with nary a word. But that didn't sit well.  There's much joy in remembering the time spent here...

I could go on at great length of how much it has meant to me to find you all -- this community of amazing women....to find, at long last, my Tribe...my Sisters....but the words can't seem to capture quite sufficiently, the depth of my feeling on this, so I shall leave without attempting, lest I diminish it.

It's simply time for a change....the energy has shifted and I need to move on. This blog has served it's purpose and deserves a rest.

Oh, I'll still be around. I'm feeling the draw back to here and here....places that are quieter, less-populous -- places for me to revel in the Joy and simplicity of my little family and simmer in my creative juices.  And, despite trimming the list, I've still got so many lovely places to visit here...

When, and if, the time comes, I may find my way back...but it will be in a different space, with a different feel...

So for now, I'll throw the dust-sheets over this one and close the door behind me, thankful for the time spent, but needing to wander a bit...

I'll leave the door unlocked....for now....

You may or may not be aware of this, but Saturn is in my second house....

A conversation amongst friends led to this revelation -- I don't pretend to be an expert on astrology by any means, but I have always found it to be eerily accurate on the occasions I have ventured forthwith. So it was with great interest I meandered into the dealings of Saturn and his iron-fisted, take-no-prisoners effect on this humble mortal.  The short-version is that Saturn is a tough task-master...there are lessons to be learned and if you choose to ignore/fail to learn, then the consequences can be harsh, or at least make things difficult for you. With Saturn wandering through my second house - the one which pertains to material possessions etc., I am being asked to consider what it is that I value. And perhaps, for me anyway, those things that no longer hold value for me, should be purged...a decluttering, you might say!

Which of course, has led to much navel-gazing on the subject. For a while now I've been moving to embrace a simpler philosophy on life and all it's trappings.  I have an intense need to clear our space of excess baggage and things which we no longer find useful or valuable to us.  It's an ongoing process, but so far, it's been a process of the shared family-space. Now the time has come to look at my Self and figure out what can stay and what needs to be kicked to the curb.

Oddly, facing this seemingly overwhelming task, I'm feeling quite cool, calm and centered. Unusual for me really, given my penchant for flying off on all manner of chaotic psychic tangents.  I find myself just sitting with the idea, instead of frantically making lists and worrying about how to rid myself of the vast accumulated detritus of my impulse-driven life. Okay, maybe just one small mental list....*sheepish grin*

A true Aries in many regards, impulse and whimsy are the banes of my existence. I am a wretched dichotomy of caution and chaos, having been known to flit willy-nilly from one fancy to the next, leaving a trail of unfinished projects in my wake.  Case in point - my various forays into assorted arty pursuits this past year. Granted I've learned some wonderful things and met some wonderful people and even unleashed an aspect of myself that I hadn't known existed, so all was not for naught.  How much of it will I continue to pursue? Have you any idea how many times my finger hovered over the Delete Blog button here? So really, not much is going to survive the Saturnine cut here. { I should hasten to add though, that I am truly, madly and deeply entranced with the fibre arts and recognize that flowy feeling I get when I'm actually going to stick with something long-term}.

So what does have true value? Whittled down, the list is quite small really.....and the only one I care to talk about right now is writing.

Oh, how I've wrestled with this one over the years. Such a love-hate thing, it's a being of immense power that raises me up and then dashes me down, challenging my feelings on Motherhood itself....in turns leaving me wracked with guilt and burning with resentment. But I emerge from each battle a little wiser, a little more grounded and a little more evolved.

Which brings me to my latest folly - NaNoWriMo. Oh, I was off to a roaring start, despite having no direction and really no idea of a story. Then, somehow, I hit a bump of days where I couldn't/didn't write (likely around my out-of-the-house work days) and just never got back to it.  I'm not entirely in love with the idea of NaNoWriMo to be quite honest.  The lovely Sarah referred to it in a comment on my post about how it flies in the face of everything she knows about her craft.  And she's right. Sure, I can see the reasoning behind just sitting down and letting the words spew forth, it's better to write crap than not write at all...right? But I just can't do it. I've spent too long learning how to write, to completely disregard what I've been taught.  Yes, I'm still writing....got back on track today...but I am fixing a sentence here and changing a phrasing there.  I probably won't make the final word count by the end of the month,  but 50,000 words is a bit long for a YA novel anyway...;)  I am allowing myself to view this as completely OKAY. I am letting go of this somewhat unreasonable expectation. I have two lovely kidlets that deserve my attention...and that won't necessarily coincide with my word quota.  Having let go of that, I'm no longer looking for new and fabulous ways to procrastinate.

The writing has value to me, so it will get done...it will be numbered among my priorities, the things that make the cut. Most of the other stuff on the list I'm going to sit with for a spell....

And on the subject of things of value...I believe there is a lesson of great importance for me in the little broken-hearted dog that lies at my feet as I type this.  This, more than any accumulation of *stuff*, is what I feel deeply in my soul....and what I will hold onto as I carefully consider what, in this great wide world, is truly important.

Sir Oscar of Russell....