Mojo . . . lost and found

​Setting new year's goals rankles me. Not because I don't need to alter my life, but because my 2018 goals look suspiciously like my 2017 goals:

write more
submit more
finish art projects
eat right
walk daily 
 
B O R I N G

What is different this new year is that I'm feeling an influx of positive energy driving me forward. My mojo is back.

​The unexpected influx of energy came after spending several months in monastic hiding mode. So many things in my life were no longer serving me. I had moved on physically, but was lagging behind emotionally and psychologically. So whenever I attempted something creative, it fell flat. I could create beautiful things for others, but not for myself. 
 
By taking a break from the frenetic activity that kept me from considering anything deeper than what I was having for dinner or what episode of Suits I was on, I was forced to have a vulnerably threatening look at the areas of my life that were suffering from neglect and filled with dross.
 
Finally, after I’d cleared out the dross, and there was a lot of dross, I rediscovered my old love, poetry. We’d passed on the street several times, and once even had coffee together at the Starbucks on Colfax, but we had not had a good conversation in ages. Poetry blamed me for being emotionally unavailable. I blamed poetry for being fickle. After agreeing to stop the name-calling, we took up where we'd left off, albeit both of us a bit skittish. 

Finding the poetry still living within had nothing to do with resolutions, but more from taking time away from the chaos and frenetic movement of everyday life in a big city. It was about returning to center. And the center for me is always the writing.
 
There was too much clutter and busyness, too much driving and shopping instead of daydreaming. I’d become an avid consumer again, something I learned in Orange and Sacramento. The art of shopping, a required course for high school graduation in California.
 
Confession: I just bought a box of Prismacolor Verythin pencils. I am still a consumer. But I also wrote and submitted a chapbook. The latter giving me 10-fold more joy.
 
I am adding one more goal for 2018:

joy
 
I had lost track of joy. That sweetest of feelings that we remember from childhood. Our first loving embrace. The perfect slice of pineapple. A poem read well and appreciated.

joy brings people together

joy infuses us with creative energy

joy is the twin sister of hope, the cousin of mojo

So, while I am wishing you a new year hard body and an industrial strength power washer, a hot yoga routine and a trip to Bolivia, I am more adamantly wishing you renewed mojo and more joy than you can load into your red Target basket.
 
Colette

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