Spring Equinox as the New Year

 Every year around the new year, I sit down and reflect on the previous year. I download Susannah Conway's Unravel Your Year workbook and sometimes other workbooks I want to try, get them printed, and try to work through them. I also choose a guiding word or theme for the year. Almost every year, it doesn't work out. I always find it to be such a struggle. I struggle to fill out the workbooks completely. I struggle to plan out the next year. Whatever I end up coming up with, I lose focus on it quickly. 

This year, I'm trying something different. The past couple of years, I've been paying attention to my natural urges and noticed that I tend to feel more eager to plan my year around March and April. Then last year, I really started thinking about the idea of living seasonally and decided to try it out. 

When you think about it, it doesn't make much sense for January 1st to be considered the new year. It is the middle of winter. The world, at least the northern hemisphere, it still at rest. Nothing is happening. It doesn't match up with natural cycles in any way. I started to realize that I tend to view the beginning of spring as the new year. So this year, I am running with that idea and I'll see how it goes.

This winter, I spent my time nesting and preparing for the spring. I finally broke up with my boyfriend and really felt the need to clean and clear the energy. I want to turn my apartment into my sanctuary. It's going to take some time as I am in the middle of paying off a debt, so it will take some time to bring in some of the things I want. In the meantime, I am focusing on clearing out what I don't want anymore.

For the Spring Equinox, which is what I will consider the first day of the year, I downloaded Susannah Conway's workbook again and I downloaded Erin Bruce's Wheel of the Year workbook. Erin Bruce's blog, The Seasonal Soul, is what made me finally decided to try living more seasonally. I rearranged the pages of the Wheel of the Year workbook so that the winter section is in the end. Then I broke up the Unravel Your Year workbook into parts based on what I thought I would like to focus on each season and mixed those pages in with the appropriate season in the Wheel of the Year workbook. I'll work with this workbook for through out the year to help me figure out this living seasonally concept and see if it will work for me.