Sunday, December 29, 2013

Looking back on the year, and looking forward to the next.

I spent a bit of time today reading back through my posts for this year, thinking about my spiritual growth through the year, as well as looking back on my year as a whole.

Spiritually speaking, the year started off strong. I was motivated, I was accomplishing goals, and things were going great. Then things took an interesting turn... Not going to go into too much detail, but it's enough to say that there was an interesting series of events which lead me to focus much more on other aspects of my life over the spiritual aspects. I mean, my spirituality is always with me, it's always there, even if it's more in the background at times - and that's really how much of this year went. That spiritual foundation was always there for me, but there were other areas which really took a lot of my time and focus.

And it was not a bad year. Actually, it was pretty great. Took up some new hobbies, visited some old hobbies, found new interests, started taking better care of myself, hit a few health problems - but also found ways to deal with them. Did a lot of things, became interested in a lot of things, that I'd never really considered before. Really opened up and got a lot of new perspective on things.

So a great year, even if my spirituality didn't always take the spotlight. However, it also showed me that even if there's not always the time for tackling specific spiritual goals, the core of it all is still always with me. I've been able to build a practice that sticks with me, even when my focus is in a lot of other directions.

So what about 2014? Well, I'd like to take a lot of what I picked up in 2013 and keep going forward with it - but I also need to remember to make time for spiritual practices that go beyond the foundational core. That's really all that was missing from this year, and if I can bring everything all together during the next year? It'll be fantastic.