Zip zip ……
another year comes quickly to a close —and looking back on it, I reflect ….. how close to my vision board hopes and dreams did I come? If you haven’t experienced the satisfaction and fun of cutting up magazines and glueing images and words that excite you to a white board, I highly recommend.

Creating a vision board helps me to expand my ideas of what I might achieve in these fleeting, crazy fast moving moments of life. Year after year. A living journal of sorts.

I usually take time to begin thinking about it early November when the days get shorter and the weather changes. I collect papers and magazines from thrift stores or neighbors throw away piles. I usually have one finished and hanging on my wall by years end. And, its uncanny how putting out my wildest thoughts can manifest miracles in my upcoming year… In any event, I lose nothing but some time (what is time anyway) by making one and I gain everything in the creative mess of collaging.

I am not rushing the end of 2024—but IMO, OMG this year flew. Fastest one yet! I know there is still time to make shit happen….but in my quiet morning meditation time, I see it was another year of just putting one foot in front of the other…. still trying to find ground and listen to what wants to express., including a fair number of WTF’s with some big smile accentuating YES’s!

I find I’m resting more solidly into the notion that small steps actually do contribute to the way forward or maybe better stated out of stagnation and complacency into purpose and passion. Everyday I have choice and I choose to make the best of every day. I find my drive in staying engaged and excited by life in planning a few big and little things so life doesn’t get away from me. I often have something to look forward to. I have thrived in those yummy warm and sunshiny days of summer and that glorious Fall season of late. And, I know myself well enough to know that I have to work a little harder in winter gray to find my happy…. but I do thanks to
certain self care practices that hold importance and carry me though the shorter days…. self Reiki, and/or….. I go in search of hot springs, indoor pickle courts, and friend and family phone numbers.

I have goals that I met in 2024 that I want to share only as an example of how this serves me to create my own accountability and hope that your reflection brings satisfaction and moments of pause (sorely neglected in our cultures pace to do more and keep up, yet so essential to acknowledge when we forget that we did anything of note).

Little or big… for me to determine only, I have my list:

• a massive one day hike to the floor of the Grand Canyon with my son for his bday
• published a poetry book – Bare Nipples. It is on the shelves of the Boulder Bookstore
• took a performance singing class and got up on Nissi’s stage and performed two songs
• participated in a painting retreat in Crestone—my 9th or 10th season
• housesitting/petsitting gigs
• campaigned to ban trophy hunting and wrote a poem and produced lion art
• traveled by train to visit family and friends on the East Coast
• quality one on one with my son who I hadn’t seen in 2 years living happily in Australia
• moved out of my Boulder storage unit in efforts to simplify and have things more or less in one place
• took Reiki/CORE energy classes to stay current with my skills
• shared thoughts as a guest for a church community back East

and then there are big ones I am setting up for 2025….. working closer to the dream of hosting women’s retreats; connecting community water to a 3 season tiny home. I’m continuing to simplify and optimize wherever I can (leaving only handprints).

I only share as a way to invite your imagination to soar….. to invite you to break your glass ceilings—to imagine travels, joys in a new way as I continue to say… with two friends recently passing… that life is short and we don’t know how much time we have or the quality of our lives. So may I suggest saying I love you often, regularly making people smile and laugh, and prioritizing living life as if someone left the gate open.

What makes me excited? What gives me boundless joy? If I could do anything and I am free to do whatever? Where would I go and what would I do?

It’s a humbling exercise……. and it is so important to stay connected to passions. To take time to reflect is similar to taking time to grieve. I can only speak from experience that time to be in the quiet of life is to build that spiritual muscle that builds a more solid foundation for future and maybe even more successful endeavors. It’s essential and we often don’t give it that…… recognition. It’s time we do!!!!! and not rush it!!!

I saw a meme that talked about western cultures believe in working, making money and indigenous cultures believe were are alive just as nature is alive to be here, to be beautiful, and be strange. We don’t need to achieve anything to be valid in our humanness!! I fall somewhere in the angst of not being in one camp—but floating between the two. Maybe leaning more towards the art of just being enough as is and letting the “you shoulds” melt away 🙂

Blair’s Herbals started approx. 10 years ago with an idea and grew to represent integrity and innovative skin care products that came from my love of working with plants that grew in my backyard. I keep this business alive and changing with the times and try to pay attention to what is being asked for. It has been quiet lately and it’s going through a period of what next??? Like I am going though-ha! I’m open to your feedback and your suggestions. It is more imperative than ever to be in relationship with the natural world around us and I want to support that through continued respectful work with plants, art, energy healing, and future women’s retreats—beauty and community being two of my core values.

I ask myself …how is my balance between having fun/living life/stretching into new experiences and tending to the day to day responsibilities of work? Where am I in habit? What needs attention and where do I need to focus my time, efforts and attention. I love the notion of working smarter not harder. And entertain the thought of periods of time that feel more productive..where does that come from? Moments in the day, in the weeks, months or the bigger cycles of life that have more traction and feelings of success? Letting go of judgement-mine and others…..it’s all relative I am learning. I just want to tap into that inner feeling of peace and satisfaction with how I have flowed through my day and if I have made my day and the day of those around me better. It’s now less about my to do list (although as a virgo—that is close by), it is more subjective I believe giving me more grace and less attachment to the craze around me. And in that frame of mind, I can be in service more wholly and more joyfully.

In peace this holiday season,
Blair