Did you know I\u2019m a New Year\u2019s baby?<\/p>\n
Today is the first day of Spring and a just beyond a week past my birthday \u2013 March 15th, the Ides (which was an ancient Roman new lunar calendar celebration marked by much wine and revelry, FYI). It is Lent. Mercury is retrograde. Suffice it to say energetics are swirling much like the snow that\u2019s wetly hammering the East coast right now. I\u2019m tucked inside, contemplating: the likelihood of making a 10am dance class, work schedules, illusions of time, anti-oppression advocacy and how it might mean never eating cheese again, and my tax deductions.<\/p>\n
Spotify\u2019s \u2018Discover Weekly\u2019 playlist is underscoring the day, and I\u2019m briefly undone when it offers me yet another cover of Childish Gambino\u2019s Redbone<\/i> \u2013 the third in as many months. Each version strikes me worse than the last, which leads me to suspect my algorithm has a point to prove. Retrogrades are wonderful times to \u201cre-do\u201d \u2013 re-evaluate, -assess, -invigorate, etc., the aspects of our lives that are asking for attention, and I suspect the artificial intelligence is simply following that guidance. Or it could be trolling me, because colorism. The jury\u2019s still out.<\/p>\n
At the moment, I take it as a sign of synchronicity. Spotify is mirroring my rebellious feelings. Quietly \u2013 and despite what calendars would have us believe \u2013 I\u2019ve always considered Spring to be the true mark of the New Year. When I celebrate New Year\u2019s Eve in December, it\u2019s honestly because I\u2019m killer at parties and enjoy certain people\/sparkling wines (plus social pressure). My truth, however, is that I\u2019ve never been able to fully reconcile our insistence on sticking a holiday ALL about newness in the middle of a time of dormancy. If we\u2019re keeping it super real, I\u2019d almost always rather be in bed but not necessarily sleeping on and around midnight of December 31st because it\u2019s often cold and generally dark plus there\u2019s no way we\u2019re getting home before three a.m. and it\u2019s definitely gonna be surge pricing.<\/p>\n
And why wouldn\u2019t we just align our new year with Nature\u2019s?<\/p>\n
Then I remember: war and religion and ego-based calendars and colonization and how a portion of life seems to consist of arguably ridiculous nonsense. And while having to ride with that truth can be infuriating and exhausting, it can also be incredibly empowering \u2013 if we remind ourselves and each other that we\u2019re gathered here to get through it together, and that \u2018life\u2019 is also a bunch of questions we all keep answering and a bunch of choices we all keep making. And we can make different choices, have different answers, and even ask different questions.<\/p>\n
So for my birthday this year, (along with the manifestation of a new high-powered blender because I\u2019m too grown to entertain the paradox of chunky smoothies) I gifted myself a commitment to an even deeper practice of what I preach \u2013 which is to remember and devote myself to the ways in which I\u2019m an architect of my reality. My wish is a promise to use my birthright superpower of intuition to inspire me to choose, ask, and answer all in the direction of my best life.<\/p>\n
And remember to enjoy the trip.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"