Leonie Dawson sent out her yearly Creating Your Incredible Year Workbook & Calendar (life & biz editions!), so I've been filling out pages, reflecting and releasing 2012, and dreaming about 2013.

At the beginning of this year, I pasted these pictures into my 2012 workbook of what I wanted to invite into my life. I can tell you that I did relax in hammocks, danced in a space that looked much like the one you see above (with the yoga women), escaped my day job and my country, went for a hike through the jungle, and bought big bags of chamomile, lavender, rose hips, red rose, spearmint, the list goes on. I only just looked at this collage again a few days ago and put all the pieces together. Dreams do come true!

Believe was my word for 2012 and I learned to believe in its power. Even the silliest things I believed in manifested, like all the prizes I won throughout the year. And bigger things happened, too when I chose to believe. I quit my job for one, which taught me that sometimes we have to jump and let God catch us. I also learned to believe in myself, write like me, dance like me, just be me.

I'll talk more about my 2013 word in an upcoming post.

I've written in my journal that 2013 looks like a mountain, large and looming and full of uncertainties, but I have no doubt that it will be an incredible year. I want to see more of the world, become more of the writer I want to be, and share my love of dance. I'm going to put all of these beautiful dreams into my workbook and watch them unfold.

Want to create your own incredible year the fun and creative way? If you haven't already, check out Leonie's workbooks. This is my second year as a circle member and working through the yearly planners, and I can't beam about them enough. I hope to create something as inspiring and beautiful someday.

I'm an affiliate so I do get a percentage of the money earned, but even if you don't go through me, I still recommend them. It really helps to get your dreams on paper, especially when they're gigantic and tromping around in your head :)

Here's to the rest of 2012 and a beautiful 2013!

After I wrote Saturday's blog post I went to the bookstore to meander and, as is my usual practice, be led to the perfect book. I actually intended on picking up Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller, but saw his 2005 book Through Painted Deserts: Light, God, and Beauty on the Open Road and felt called to read a few pages. So I sat down on a step stool and read the Author's Note, nearly cried over it's beauty and truth, and couldn't help but think, maybe God's saying something. The part that really gets me:

"And so my prayer is that your story will have involved some leaving and some coming home, some summer and some winter, some roses blooming out like children in a play. My hope is your story will be about changing, about getting something beautiful born inside you, about learning to love a woman or a man, about learning to love a child, about moving yourself around water, around mountains, around friends, about learning to love others more than we love ourselves, about learning oneness as a way of understanding God. We get one story, you and I, and one story alone. God has established the elements, the setting and the climax and the resolution. It would be a crime not to venture out, wouldn't it?

"It might be time for you to go. It might be time to change, to shine out. I want to repeat one word for you: Leave.

"Roll the word around on your tongue for a bit. It is a beautiful word, isn't it? So strong and forceful, the way you have always wanted to be. And you will not be alone. You have never been alone. Don't worry. Everything will still be here when you get back. It is you who will have changed."

I've probably read that piece 10 times by now; it makes every cell in my body buzz with life.

Let me tell you, having a restless spirit is inconvenient at times. There are moments when it's quiet, when it whispers, "This is good. Keep doing this." And then, as if waking up from a long nap it shouts, "Time to move on!" And it dances around inside my body until I comply. 

I can pick out the last three BIG spirit dances - the ones that led to big changes, shifts in thinking, choices being made. 

I was 16, halfway through my sophomore year and decided I just didn't want to go to high school anymore. I started missing school, distancing myself from everyone because well, they just didn't get it. I saw the world differently than my high school peers. I didn't think I was any better, just...different, and I needed out. I felt chained to an identity that high school demands of you and I didn't want that. My spirit pushed and pushed and caused a lot of depression and anxiety in me until I had to just ask my mom, "Can I quit?" Luckily she was understanding and let me do my thing. I am ever grateful for that because leaving high school three years early allowed me to follow my own path, start college at 17, and finally feel like I could be myself.

I was around 26 when the next big shift came. I was living in Tennessee with my boyfriend, had a good job, didn't have a lot of responsibility as far as bills went. A pretty easy life, and I felt okay for awhile, but I knew something was brewing inside. I became increasingly depressed about my position: working a desk job eight hours a day, not really feeling like I was doing much with my life, shopping for happiness, etc. I knew something had to change, but I wasn't sure what or how. Things were too quiet, too complacent, and my spirit hated it. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), when you don't do something to change your situation, it gets changed for you. The boyfriend broke up with me out of the clear blue and forced me to make a move. Life was no longer predictable, and although heartbreaking as it was, my spirit was sighing in relief.

But I didn't learn the lesson my spirit was trying to teach me and went right back into a life of complacency not too long afterward. I followed a societal dream, scrambled to start a career in something I could have cared less about, and forgot what I was really after. I shopped even more than before because the glossies and the TV told me to. They told me I'd be complete if I just had this one thing. But it never worked and stuff became meaningless and overbearing. On top of that, I wanted out of my job. I couldn't take working for someone else anymore or doing things that didn't mean squat to me. Four months ago my spirit practically shouted at me to get out and there would be no rest until I did. 

So here I am four months later, working for myself, freelance writing, still paying the bills, thank God. And life's been good, but I feel my spirit tapping once again. "Time to get a move on," she says. My way of looking at life continues to shift. What was once so normal to me now seems silly. I purge myself of stuff, find peace in simplicity, long for adventure and new ways of life. The US of A no longer satisfies these deep needs. Even if for some reason I had to stay here, I'd have to get far away from the cities, even the towns, live in a tent in the desert or something. 

It is not my dream to be in any one place doing any one thing. At times I think I crave stability, but when I get it, I become bored and the spirit starts dancing. I think God has a lot planned, big tasks that I can't even imagine right now. I constantly feel like I'm on the precipice of some grand adventure, some big thing God needs me to do. And that is why I feel like uprooting myself is the right thing to do. It is hard to hear God in such a noisy, materialistic, fear-filled nation. Maybe the Philippines is the stepping stone, the first stop on the grand adventure. All I know is that the more I read and watch about those 7000 islands, the more it calls. And maybe it will totally suck, but I have to try. 

Most of all, I trust when my spirit dances and it is dancing to the tune of Donald Miller's prayer and Elizabeth Gilbert's Eastern adventures and life beyond this bubble I've known. 

Something has to change.  

I'm in my own sacred middle, but it seems that I've been ignoring it. It's easy to do, isn't it? Forget about where we are, who we are right now, what we have at this moment?

I'm on a journey to somewhere with a vague idea of where that might be, but I've been going crazy trying to understand my future, make plans, envision myself a year from now. I make vision boards that don't feel quite right, try on different masks, wonder and worry if everything's going to happen the way I plan. Of course it won't. 

I want to move to the Philippines with my boyfriend, live humbly, travel the East, collect experiences and stories and live outside these American walls. I know I will not only grow as a writer, but spiritually. But then there's my family who thinks I'm crazy and abandoning them and how am I not supposed to feel guilty about that? I know they don't fully understand where I'm coming from and I can't expect them to, but it brings a girl down, you know? You have your own dreams and your family's dreams and you just can't make everyone happy.

But then again, I'm not even sure what my dreams are. I know I want to be with my love and write books and not have to worry about making ends meet. That I know for sure. But everything else is just kind of blurry. It's like whatever dream I write down for myself becomes knotted in my mind. It doesn't fit right. I feel better saying I don't want to move there or stay here or be anywhere. I just want to float through the cosmos with no plan at all.

So here's where I am, on the top of this hill looking down, but seeing absolutely nothing. Even my near future is in a dense fog. If I put my hand out even a little, it disappears.

I've written countless soul letters to God asking what's going on. It was tonight that his words showed up on the page. Basically, forget the future. 

Forget the planning and the dreaming and the trying to figure it all out. Forget it and focus on now. People and places are inconsequential. It's what you do with what you have where you are, right now.

The sacred middle. What's gone is gone and the future...well...who knows.

One day at a time because we only have this moment.

To write means to leave everything behind. People, places, things. Most definitely things. Writing is a depressing kind of happy.

It's when you're driving and daydreaming about all the stuff you wish you had and you could really see yourself in a Jag, but you know there's no way in hell that's going to happen. Unless you're the 1% of writers who actually make that kind of money. So you start wondering if maybe the writing life was the wrong path. That's the depressing part.

But then you get home, it's quiet and the dog is snuggled in your lap, you're sipping on green tea and writing profusely and you realize there's nothing else you'd rather do. There's nowhere else you'd rather be. That's the happy part, and it far outweighs the sadness.

In Thunder and Lightning: Cracking Open the Writer's Craft Natalie Goldberg writes, 

The path with no markers, nothing is guaranteed. Not fame, not money, not love, not the house you always dreamed of. Maybe not even joy, but always happiness, even if in the little moments that keep you writing for the rest of your life. 

Are you leaving it all behind?

Sea-foam green butterflies on tiny yellow flowers

Walking to get the newspaper. Who still reads the paper? My mom, that's who.

My bumper sticker that reads, "The only thing worse than unemployment is having a job."

Reading Oprah magazine

A plate of fresh baked cinnamon muffins

Sitting beneath a tree writing, a dog in my lap, a striking cherry-red cardinal on the fence

Watching Casper for the second time this year

My favorite American Girl book - Samantha's Surprise, A Christmas Story (Mercury retrograde has me all nostalgic)

Watching funny movies with my sis and laughing til we cried

Coloring my hair dark brown

Silver glitter eye shadow and popping-pink lipstick

Admiring without buying

Dreaming about weddings on the beach and bamboo bathtubs

DIY Christmas present ideas