03 Feb I Get Low Right About Now Every Year.

I get low right about now every year.

I’ve often wondered if it was simply the cold weather. Being a Southerner, I don’t take kindly to frost. Or maybe the cold holds me back from walking as often, or even feeling motivated to do so. Or is it the adrenalin hangover after the hustle and bustle and the highs of the holidays? Maybe the fact that I am forced to sit down and waste an entire day with year end tax stuff. God, that can certainly kill a spirit! All I know is that I wrestle with this low at the start of every year.

It was during this time in 2011 that I, during one of my deepest lows, blindly enrolled in a 30-day class in New York City. In 2016, during this January funk, I bought a plane ticket to Shanghai, and the next January I booked a writing retreat in Montana. I told no one because each time they seemed like such harebrained ideas. How I’d pull them off seemed impossible but I held the craziness close to me, each giving me something to dream about during these low spots.

As my energy healer friend Mindy tells me, you must honor your lows. Like an ocean wave, you must ebb to flow. And how wise of her.

Never in 2011 would I have imagined how a crazy 30-walk across Manhattan would have catapulted my career. Never did I imagine that simply having a plane ticket to a new place, far, far away, would give me something to learn about, and a challenge to aim for. And never would I have seen my writing world fling open when I booked the Haven retreat.

Yep, Mindy, I am finally beginning to understand your advice. I no longer wallow in the depths of January or in the cold or boredom. I now do something about it. I honor it and the dream it produces.

So to that I ask, “Where should I go next?”