Tuesday, October 16, 2012

10/17/12—Reviewing Your Year


Today's Draw Classic-ish*: Seven of Pentacles from the Prairie Tarot. Have you reviewed and reevaluated lately? What areas of your life are working and what areas aren't? What would you change?

The Seven of Pentacles represents that moment when your work is done. You've planted, hoed, weeded, watered and now there's nothing left to do but just wait for harvest time. It's a time of reward, focus and of nurturing your dream. This is a good time. The hard work is over. You can think back on everything with pride.

The Seven of Pentacles can also represent a time of reflection, where you survey what you've done and evaluate and/or reevaluate. What have you done right? What could you do differently next time? Maybe we've done everything right and don't need to change a thing. But we can check in and see. This isn't a time to be critical. You should recognize and enjoy the rewards of what you've accomplished. But if you see room for improvement or see something you could have done differently, note it.

In the past year of my life, I've made a lot of changes. I've moved on from some dynamics that were draining and no longer served. I healed a key relationship and got closure on another. I said goodbye to my brother and said hello to a new doggie. I continued my pursuit of my career as an author. I've expanded my work in teaching tarot. And I've made some strides in taking care of myself and not being so hard on myself. All that said, this feels more like a transitional year for me than one in which I've made life-changing moves. 

Looking over all of this, I am pretty satisfied with my year so far. I wouldn't change a thing, except my brother's death. But there's nothing I could have done there. I still give away a lot of my weekends to the teaching and tarot meetups...and a lot of evenings to this. But those tradeoffs are still working for the time being, because they take me out of my everyday world as an advertising copywriter. 

If you had described this life to me when I was a teenager, I'd think it was the coolest life ever. I really don't know how adding or subtracting anything would make me happier. I tend to think I'd be happier working full-time as an author, but I don't KNOW that. Sometimes I think having a man in my life would make me happier, but it's never worked that way before...haha. In the end happiness isn't in any of that stuff anyway. It's more in how engaged I am in what I'm doing than what it is I'm actually doing (but it DOES help to dig what you do).

Anyway, I guess what it all comes down to is that, even if you're doing fine, you might find some things to change. Conversely, even if you could use some changes, you may choose to stay the same. Just take the time to review now and again, because when you pull back to see the big picture, you might just discover you're better off than you thought!

*This post is heavily revised from one I wrote exactly a year ago today.

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