At the beginning of '07 I said to several good friends, "This is my year" and then I proceeded to make it so. It has been quite a year. Since June I've been on the outskirts of society and am learning to swim my way down the stream of life. I've perplexed plenty of people including my family and often late at night I wonder if I'm going totally insane or becoming completely enlightened. I'm taking the latter and learning to trust it. It's been a miraculous trip this year of mine. In October I thought I'd starve but I didn't. I learned to track Craigslist like a fiend and it produced a couple of jobs that got me through till now. My mother gave me two more installments beyond the sabbatical she funded and I am forever grateful. Friends have helped me with loans and I am humbled and honored. Miracles erupt every day and I'm finding out that staying in the present moment is essential to manuever through this exhilirating, exhausting experience. On more than one occasion I would have easily given it all up to have my teaching job back. No more complaining. A paycheck every two weeks, the hell with burn out, stop being a baby! Comply! Comply! Comply!

But every day I see growth, change, wisdom emerging from the knowledge, the determination to hold on despite the critical eyes, desperation, and what appears on more days than not, small progress. "What do you write?" is asked of me whenever I declare myself as a writer."When is your book going to be done?" I've heard, too. And then the looks that say I'm posing, coasting, in a breakdown, in flux, in trouble.

I'm writing articles that come to me as I go about my day and I'm sending them out and I'll send more and more until I know I'm a freelancer. I'll finish the novel and release it when I say it's done.

I'm carrying around an idea notebook. Being a writer is a commitment, as true to the act of marrying someone, promising. I promise to work on this every moment of my life. And on the days it seems like I'm totally out of my comfort zone and not a good writer, I'll write more. And the small breakthroughs will continue to come as in labor when it seems hopeless, finally the head will crown. But what I have learned this year is to enjoy it all, this incredible journey.

2008. It's going to be a great year.

Steps to Take

Kids come home from college and you can see the grown layer of their persona is being stripped even before you open the door. Just to see my daughter standing there, red cap against her dark hair and even though I can't see her face, I know she is older, farther away from the little girl whose enthusiasm even my worst day could not dampen. She is more resolute, more womanly, more grown into who she must be to take the steps she will take to get to where she needs to go. I open the door and we walk down to eat sushi, what is becoming our ritual and this time I want to tell her that her mom is getting stronger, better, more alive, going with the flow. Instead, I just eat Pad Thai and pray I can pull this off and listen to her and edit my questions for fear of asking too much and losing reception.

I watched "Away from Her" tonight as my college girl slept and the movie caused me to reach for my notebook to write more on the novel that will be my next child. I wrote and thanked the universe for this emotion as my throat swallowed.

It just seems to be my way to go to the limit...the frightening abyss of nothing...and yet, later, as I lie in bed, I realize I am putting into practice everything I have studied, professed, realized: I am embracing the unknown. Detach, detach, detach, detach, I hear coming from my heart. Oh yes! Detachment! That little old spiritual law I keep forgetting to fold into me. The queen of attachment, I know how much money I have left, how far (or short) it will go, and the fear strangles me again until I remember to detach, live in this very present moment and let go!

Now it is morning and I am still learning to let go. But at least it is in my scope now. I have something more to offer both of my daughters and even though my spiritual muscles are weak, I will allow them to grow stronger or rather softer until the faintest feeling produces the most solid results.

Te amo.

Happy Holidays!