Looking Back and Ahead

My Joy Rebel mission for this week is to look back on my blog to one year ago and see where I was, what I was blogging about and where I want to go over the coming year.

One year ago I was reading about the mysticism of everyday life and blogging about chaos theory and that pesky little devil I call ego, the mini-me inside my head who thinks there is an entity separate from the rest of the world whose name is Kelly. Ha, ha, ha, ha.

I was living with four other people and watching my ego go crazy every day, using that as practice material as much as possible.

I was new to insurance claims and happy to be employed in a town with a high unemployment rate.

So, hmmm. Not a lot has changed.  In a way this is good. I have found a lineage of Buddhist teachers whose way of pointing the way resonates with me.  I have gone deeper into mindfulness practice and have made a stronger commitment to daily meditation practice.

Physically I am in a different place, … my own space where I have lots of quiet time every day.

I have survived a whole winter of occasional blues and anxiety using diet, exercise and mindfulness instead of the wine or pills on which I once would have relied.

My world has just recently opened up tremendously. The loneliness and isolation I felt due to not yet having found members of ‘my tribe’ in this city have lifted completely. First I found Windsor Meditation Group, then I met E about the same time I met J.

Now there are people to invite into my home and people inviting me into their homes.

Even though I consider myself predominately introverted, I do recognize that after a couple of hours talking to a girlfriend, I feel more sane. Without friendships, my world becomes tiny and closed and neurotic.

And what do I see for the coming 12 months? I don’t know. I do know that I feel something brewing. There is a shift taking place as we speak. I am going to ride that shift and see where it takes me.