A Year for Creating

Happy (slightly belated) New Year! I realize it has been a while since I was last here. My heart is still not quite strong enough to sail through school holidays, and Christmas is the trickiest, what with all the "extras" from the North Pole to attend to! However, I have some rest time set aside now that the girls are back at school and there are lots of ideas percolating around in my head that I am excited about exploring in 2014.

One concept that I keep running into is that of Theme Words. Like everyone, I am familiar with New Year's Resolutions (or Revolutions as my daughter used to call them, perhaps more accurately!), but picking a word that represented what the "theme" of my year would be was totally new to me.

The first word that popped into my head was Authenticity, but after some reflection I realized that that had been my theme for 2013! It was the whole foundation for this blog, in fact — tapping back into my authentic self to help bring about healing. I had been diagnosed with heart failure in 2012 and reasoned that living more from my true heart-space (listening more to my own heart's guidance), would be the best place to begin.

This proved to be the case and I made huge improvements last year. I also made this blog and dipped my toe tentatively into social media. I am low-tech by nature and struggle with the electronic side of things, but I love to write and share ideas and I was looking for a community of like-minded people, so I jumped in and tried my best. The site itself still needs a lot of work, but it has already (in the six months that I have been dabbling) brought me so much.

I am flexing my creative muscle and that is opening doors. I started using Instagram (aimeesapothecary) recently as one of my other loves is taking photographs. The unexpected treat that came with that adventure was the visual dialogue that is happening in that world. Wow! So much creativity there and it has connected me to people and worlds that inspire me every day. Seeing what others are up to reminded me of how many interests I had dropped along the way as life got busy and other responsibilities filled my days. I had started to feel empty and, as Julia Cameron says, I needed to fill my "creative well".

And so after a few days of pondering and ending up at exactly the same place each time, I have settled on "Create" as my theme word for 2014. Last year, I remembered who I really was, deep down, and this year I will try to honour that by creating opportunities wherever I am drawn: writing, photography, knitting, baking, candlestick-making (totally serious here!) and I'm sure many more ideas will bubble up to the surface as I continue to explore. I hope you will join me. I have a feeling this is going to be an exciting year!