It's April now, and even though the weather doesn't quite feel like spring yet, I'm beginning to notice small signs of life emerging from the winter dreariness, like these perfect tiny crocuses (croci?) bursting out of the dirt in someone's postage stamp front yard on the block down the street.
I tend to categorize and divide my life by phases--for a long time I lived by the school calendar and September always marked a new beginning. Now that I've officially been out of education institutions for three years, I am putting more emphasis on the actual end of the calendar year in December. But April is my birthday month, and so it signals a new beginning to me as well. I tend to prefer even numbers of both years and ages, although they never match up for more than four months. Twenty-six has been an incredible year of change and personal growth for me, but I am looking forward to 27 in a way I haven't experienced in a while, maybe ever before. Over the past couple of months I feel like I have emerged from a cocoon or vortex of constant transitions, changes, uncertainty, new experiences, and have reached a point where everything is stabilizing under me, weight has lifted off my shoulders, I am allowing myself to think about the future with excitement instead of anxiety and doubt. I am experiencing a new sense of confidence in myself that is empowering, liberating, and kind of scary at the same time.
For April, instead of setting "goals" I am going to approach this new month with one overarching theme that Oh My Handmade introduced: Shoots and Roots. I'm obsessed with goals (Ben is rolling his eyes right now) and strongly believe that goals and action plans are the drivers of success, so I'm not completely giving up on my medium- and long-term intentions, but for April I am going to pull the reigns on the madness and self-imposed pressure I've been operating under as I try to DO ALL THE THINGS, and direct my main focus on creating a solid foundation for the larger things I want to accomplish this year with my entrepreneurial adventures. Organization is something extremely important to my peace of mind, but it doesn't come naturally to me. I'm looking forward to "forcing" myself to step back, do some spring cleaning around the apartment and my mess of a file system, and make sure that everything is in order so that when it is time to grow, I am ready and can sustain it.
Hopefully this new focus will also let me reflect on my long-term objectives, narrow down what I really want to achieve, and will allow me to relax and enjoy life in the process as we slowly and gradually move into the new season.
I cannot WAIT to finally get some warmer days!