The Return of Saturn

It is an alleged phenomenon which is described as influencing a person’s life development at 27 to 29 or 30-year intervals. These intervals or “returns” coincide with the approximate time it takes the planet Saturn to make one orbit around the sun, i.e. 29.4 years. It is believed by astrologers that, as Saturn “returns” to the degree in its orbit occupied at the time of birth, a person crosses over a major threshold and enters the next stage of life. With the first Saturn return, a person leaves youth behind and enters adulthood. With the second return, maturity. And with the third and usually final return, a person enters wise old age.-Wikipedia

I don’t believe in astrology at all, but without a doubt 2012 was my “Return of Saturn.” It wasn’t so much “entering adulthood” as “hold on, everything in your life will be rocked to the very core.”  WHEE!

So, yeah, you name it- it all got shook up in 2012. This felt in some ways similar to 2006, the year my dad died. Everything was up for grabs, and yet there was still a whole lotta love, travel, and intense feeling throughout the entire year. While it was a crazy time, one of the best things about this past year was that through sheer will and practice I developed a much stronger sense of empathy. I also became better at dealing with stressful emotions and thought patterns. I know it sounds crunchy, but it’s AWESOME, like some emotional superpower. Anyways, I enjoyed developing my empathic skills so I decided to investigate becoming a therapist. That wasn’t the right career path for me, but I found a great volunteer opportunity at the IOA, and so far I’m still working toward being a phone counselor there. Who woulda guessed?

So now that the dust has mostly settled, I can turn my attention toward 2013. My resolutions list is about a week late, but I wanted to make sure that I was committed before I made them public. Here we go:

The Easier to Implement

• Start a positive early morning routine that allows me to slow down: including 5 minutes of meditation, a little stretching and some coffee. I’m not a morning person, so it would be nice to have pleasant things to look forward to when I wake up.
• Switch to washing my face with jojoba oil instead of soap (random, but I’m already seeing results)
• 30 days of veganism concurrent with 8 wks of the I Quit Sugar Program  just to see how my body feels (will be doing blog updates on this one)
• Finally get my wisdom teeth out. 🙁

A Little Vague, A Lot More Tricky, And a Lot More Hippie

• Work on getting out of my head more. This sounds so vague but I think that it can be accomplished with continuing my volunteer work, reading more, and continuing to make time for travel.
• Helping my mom out with her restaurant, from revamping her menu to getting her set up online.
• Simplify- I already love purging, but since I moved into a 6″x10″ room I’ve felt more inspired to take it to the next level. Beyond stuff, this includes cutting out people and habits that aren’t working for me anymore. Goodbye Twitter, goodbye friends who only want to talk about themselves.
• Hold onto moments of happiness and don’t feel guilty or rush through them when they happen.
• Probably the trickiest but most exciting goal: Write something. Will it be short stories? Will it be a blog? Will it be a novella? I don’t know, but I’d like to be able to publish it as an e-book by the end of the year. It will probably be about either 2006 or 2012. Surprise, surprise.

I feel a bit freaked out by these goals, so I guess that’s a good thing.