2013

Well "Hi There" 2013...  What have you got in store for me then?
2012 was a mammoth year... It's been tough in many ways but....and I am trying to avoid sounding cliched but hey, if you can't get away with it on new year when can you? ... I really do feel that it's been transformative.  I have had to reach inside myself and find reserves, draw on them, push myself to see what I can do, stand on my own two feet with no-one else to blame or fall back on, and bloody grow up.  I feel like a very different person this New Year's Eve.  Some years pass with barely a ruffle of the feathers and we ask ourselves "Hey!?...What happened to that whole year?"  This was not one of those years.
It's been a tough slog at times but I'm not complaining about that... Hard work is its own reward in so many ways.... And this year is no different.  I have grown as a person and even while whinging I have relished the challenges... I think the hardest part of this year has been my loss of optimism.  Entirely separately to the actual events in my own life... I have found myself watching the world around me in increasing horror.  I have found myself tossed by a flood of despair over the deeply unfair and unjust and just plain evil state of humanity.  I stepped out of my comfort zone in a big way this year... And I gotta say... I did not like what I saw.  I thnk deep down I always believed that somehow there was a balance of good and evil in the world, that injustice was eventually righted, and stupidity eventually educated with patience and perspective.  I have lost that belief this year.  In 2012 I realised that the world really is intent on self destruction and that the bad people are in power, and that all around the world there is unspeakable horror happening every day and NO ONE IS STOPPING IT!
So 2012 threatened to suck me into a dark place of despair at the futility of trying to make the world a better place...and without that...I don't know what is left to motivate me to keep on keeping on.  I would sit by my daughters bed side watching her sleep and find myself filled with fear for her future, and wracked with frustrated powerlessness...
But like a bubble in a glass... I won't go down... I will find a way up again somehow.  The only way I can think of is by making 2013 my year of spirituality and inner balance.  I let my inner balance get sorely drained by lack of sleep, poor health habits and pure dogged determination to ignore anything but external obligations this year... 2013 I will change this.  I need to find my way back to a deeper sense of meaning in the suffering of life, and some sense of what the hell to do about it.... And to do that I need some inner quiet and wellbeing.  So this year is my year of reaching deeper to find the ultimate truths and sit within them.
So that's my journey this year... What is yours?