Sliding into 2024

I'm sliding into 2024 faster and slower than I would like. Covid has kicked my butt and left me weak and fatigued. I've missed out on spending time with family and friends due to being in quarantine. Yet, it's also given me some time to reflect. I wrote the poem below about nine years ago - when I was still trying to figure out who I was. After my divorce, I floundered for years, trying to figure out my new life. (Don't worry; this isn't a sad sack post. LOL.) I tried a lot of different places and jobs and did what I thought was expected of me (building a career and buying a house). This last year, I realized that I had built an amazing career to the detriment of my health - physical and mental. The result is detailed in the first post in this blog. Sold the house and car. Rehomed the dogs. New career/job. New state. The difference is that this time, I'm not running from anything. I'm not searching for something. I'm solid. I know who I am. 2024 will be about rebuilding my physical health, building a new home (not literally), learning my new career, and hopefully making new friends. It's not all roses. Moving while starting a new career is stressful. Things go wrong. But then things go right. I'm bending with the wind and staying true to my soul. Change can be beautiful. So here's to 2024! Happy New Year!

Cold Fire Gypsy (by Julie Thomas, written April, 2015)

And just like that I feel the person

I used to be slipping away. Like

A snake shedding its skin.

Underneath, I am harder,

tempered steel.

My alone-ness burns always

within me

consuming all else...

that cold fire burning out

all my old dreams

and thoughts of

who and where I might have been...

There is a new, harder

shining and fierce goddess

rising within me.

She is powerful in her terrible beauty,

a brilliant, hot, lonely flame,

that burns always from within...

I do not know this new person.

I have become....

a cold-fire gypsy.