Why Vacations are Important

Vacations are important--especially vacations like cruises where everything is taken care of for you, and your biggest decisions are what (and when) to eat, where to plant yourself to sleep in the sun, what game to take to which bar, and what to drink once you get there. The forced downtime allows your energy pool to refill, and your creativity to reawaken from where it went and hid when you became so overextended that each day was a litany of have-to's and exhaustion. (Note that it is unfair that your creativity fled when it was likely what got you over-extended and exhausted in the first place.) Over the past week, my creativity, named Palladia-Mors, first yawned and stretched, then prowled in circles, and this morning woke with a roar to announce her presence with authority. I was immediately driven from the bed to write--three (or more) posts coming in the next few days as a result.

Artwork by Ed Beard Jr.

Palladia is the reincarnated essence of the original elder dragon of the same name, and her arrogance, drive, and fury have not diminished with her transformation and transferral to me. Her powers as a dragon were fly and trample, and she kept them when she transformed. 

Yes, I wrote that paragraph whimsically and with tongue firmly in cheek, but I realize as I watch the ocean roil from my balcony on the Brilliant Lady that there is also more than a kernel of truth to it. That-which-drives-me IS a force of nature who tramples me (and everyone else in her wake). She soars above the mundane in life, ever pushing me to go higher and faster and farther. She wakes me up, keeps me from sleeping, and causes me to constantly throw myself into new projects with neither thought nor care for the (inevitable) consequences and crash. It was allowing her free rein that caused me to end up with 100 fruit trees, over 3,000 seedlings, 10 raised beds, 16 horses, three barn cats, and 47 chickens--all within the span of a few months.

Now she is awake again, and though I have missed her, THIS year I am going to be careful what I let her talk me into. I will ride her, not vice-versa.

So, thoughts, plans, ambitions, and dreams for the new year? I have a few, each to get its own post. In no particular order they are:

• Start rebuilding the strength and muscle I have lost since my surgery five years ago
• Continue growing the farm in a more structured and thoughtful way
• Revive Siyeh Studio
• Do my first equine endurance ride 
• Learn to work with young horses to build their initial foundation skills so they can be re-homed
• Set up the textile studio
• Finish unpacking and do my own version of a Swedish Death Cleanse

And that's enough goals for now!