End of the Year Thoughts
Wow guys, 2019. How did it feel for you? When you sit down to think about this year, what comes up for you? Every year for me seems to go deeper and deeper into the bellows of life, but each year I learn so much more, grow so much more, and find more of my light.
I'm not going to lie, I've been struggling these last few weeks. I'm such a dreamer, such a doer and yet I find myself sad often because I feel my work isn't taking me anywhere. I'm just on a cloud that never moves. Maybe this is part of being an artist, having those days where life feels this way. But if I imagine what I'd be doing otherwise, I can't imagine anything else. I'm just doing what I love, and doing so has to be enough for me. As you know, I've been working on a book that I was supposed to release to you guys on December 8th. Those plans were crushed when I received the proof copy of the book a week ago and it looked horrendous. I wanted to go through a different printing company and they can't help me with the color quality of the book. For the last several days I've been looking for tech support to help me change the color profiles and it seems like nobody in the universe knows how to fix this problem. It is super frustrating and is making me feel like above... I just want to get my book out to y'all within the next month!
Sometimes, life can do this to you. Bring you challenges in the present that make you feel less bright than you'd like to feel. Now is the perfect time to decide to put those feelings and thoughts away and to reflect on this year, 2019. If you wrote some intentions or had a vision board for this year, then get them out baby and let's look at them! This is one of my favorite things to do, is to write intentions, forget about them, and then go back and reflect to see if and how they happened. It's the best way to write a story, in my opinion, so much magic!
Here's what I wrote for my 2019 intentions:
Looking back on this, I thought I wrote so much more! In 2018, I wrote some big intentions, like paying off my student debt, buying a property, and starting some big community projects. Those 2018 intentions were more like a five year plan for me... So in 2019 I decided I wouldn't go that far as to write things that big, though I knew that they would happen in due time. 2018 was like the visionary year - where did I want to be? What did I want to be doing? What was my lifestyle like? So I was able to create some sort of blueprint for myself to work towards. 2019 was like the year of internal growth. So much happened this year inside of me and not too much happened in my physical reality. I grew because I had to. To get me ready for what is to come. Sometimes our dreams and desires are ours specifically to change us to help us grow. I definitely feel that. Like, I couldn't become someone with a status of wealth if I hated money. It just doesn't work that way. I couldn't influence people to make an ecological change in their lives, to better the planet if I was living in a place of lack. Sometimes we need to grow inside, to face these demons that hold us back so we can move forward and share the light we came here to give.
My 2019 started out with me trying to escape the reality I was living in. I was (and still am) living with a lovely couple in Sedona, Arizona and am creating a garden for them. They have a non-profit called Enriching Life Forever and wanted a garden to go along with that, to help the community with donating food. My way of coping with myself in the past was to escape and to run away, to travel... I love learning how to live in new places so moving around a lot is pretty easy for me. The biggest challenge is setting down roots and staying somewhere and learning how to work with a community. At the time I had literally no money or motivation to do anything. I had goals to write more books, but I didn't write anything new until the middle of summer... It was around March when Austin and I were looking into moving into the mountains, to try out life in a ski town. I talked to my dad about this the most, and he just went along with it, always supporting me but knowing that is was the wrong choice... Then, no kidding, a week or two later Austin came home from snowboarding and was a total wreck - his face bleeding, he was half conscious, and he was holding his wrist. A stop to the emergency room later, we found out he broke his wrist in three places and he needed to get a metal plate surgically inserted into his wrist to keep it together. That was such a HUGE sign to stay where we were at!
A month later, I got a text from my aunt who I don't hear from often. She was worried about my dad and had me asking my family if they'd heard from him. A few hours later, I get a text from my sister saying my dad passed away in his bed. I called my fam, everyone was crying. That same day we drove more than 24 hours back to Wisconsin to be with my family for a couple of weeks. There is still no concrete conclusion as to why he passed, but it happened. Looking back on what happened, my dad saved my life and his passing is transitioning my life into something I didn't think was possible. In 2018, I set out an intention to pay off all of my debt, all $27,000 of it, $25,000 of it being student loan debt. He knew about this, but neither of us knew how this would be possible unless a suitcase of money flew out of the sky to me. I was an organic farmer at the time making minimum wage and living in an RV because rent is too expensive for someone like me who had a ton of debt. Even when I moved to Sedona, I worked part time as a caretaker for a vacation rental making about the same as the farm work I was doing. One day, Austin and I were driving into town and I made a clear intention that I would pay off my debt while living in Sedona. That was in November of 2018. When my dad passed, his new job had a great life insurance plan that gave each of his kids a hefty check. I got one of those checks and paid off all my debt with it. I made a video about it, you can watch it here. The day I went debt free was June 7, 2019. THE POWER OF INTENTION IS SO REAL GUYS!
It doesn't stop here though. Above you'll see I wrote that I wanted to travel to Ireland. Back in January, I had no idea how I'd get to go there, because plane tickets to Europe were so much and my annual income was... $8,000. Still, I set the intention to go to Ireland in the summer and what do you know? I was able to go! I had money left over from the life insurance check to pay for Austin and I to go to Ireland, to rent a car, and to go for a two week road trip around the entire island. I'd say that the biggest manifest-or for this event was sitting down with Austin and planning out the trip as best as we could, deciding when, where, and why and allowing the how to just come as it did. We'd sit down at a cafe once a week writing down all the logistics and the rest was intuitive. When we got to Ireland, we didn't really have any concrete plans other than the areas we were staying in while we were there. The rest flowed like a river.
Besides for Ireland, we traveled to San Diego twice, all over Arizona many times, and Wisconsin once together and I went once alone. Usually, traveling is cheap and easy because we just sleep in the car... which is how we visited San Diego the first time. After that, I decided that I'd like to get an AirBnb for staying places in the city. I love BLM camping when we can actually set up a tent and be alone in the woods or where ever we may be.
Some of my other intentions had to do with personal growth and the garden. Losing my dad helped me grow so much. It was actually pretty magical, the transformation I went through with him. It was like a weight lifted from my shoulders. I've talked about him before; he was morbidly depressed and didn't really see a future for himself. He carried on though, day after day until he just didn't wake up. I'd call him often to check up on him and though we always had great conversation, I felt somewhat responsible for helping him feel better, for helping him find purpose and joy again. That responsibility disappeared when he passed... I no longer had to worry about him or how he was doing. Anyone with a family member like this knows how draining it can be to always be there for someone who couldn't be there for themselves. It's not selfish to say or feel such things... it just is what it is. I did my best for him, and he knows it. I really miss him, and often times I find myself talking to him in the truck and sobbing because there's nothing else I can do. Anyways, losing a parent requires a lot of personal growth... learning how to do things without them. Oddly enough, losing him gave me the gift of learning how to deal with money. Most of my life I felt that money was the root of all evil. I thought it was the driving force behind my dad's depression because in my eyes it caused him such anguish - he chased it though hated how he had to get it. I've shifted though from that - money is a gift, it is energy, it is the driving force behind how we can go about and do things. We exchange money like we can conversation. It is a neutral entity - humans label it as good or bad. One of my intentions is to become wealthy - not to have a ton of things - rather, to help out our community and planet with healing and creating local food securities in different communities. I'd like to be a... philanthropist of sorts! Many people have dreams or great ideas that can help raise the vibration of Earth but they don't have a way out of their current situation (besides waiting a long time) or they don't have the funding to start such projects. Wouldn't it be great to have a local philanthropist who could help out with that??
Ah, the garden is up next. I had no idea what I was doing when I started this garden. I just... started. The intention was to start something and donate the excess. We didn't have much excess this year, much of the garden was eaten in our kitchen. The main focus for the garden this year was to build soil. We started out on top of bare and rocky red clay that couldn't sustain much... so we put down layers of cardboard, leaves, and wood chips to start building our own. The spring garden failed pretty badly because of javelina intruders who came by night, until we got an electric fence to keep them out! The garden this summer gave us tons of squash, bumblebee tomatoes, beans, Swiss chard, cucumbers, and a few peppers. I'm pretty proud of the garden, it came a long way! Next year I have additional plans... and we've already started! I don't know how long I'll be living here, but my goal in my life somewhere along the way is to host educational programs to teach people how to garden this way and to get more people growing food. Our Earth depends on it! Maybe I'll run it by the home owners to see if they'd be down for stuff like that going on here...
Adventures Across has grown too this year! I went from being pretty vague in what I do to creating a solid website and platform to share on. I haven't been sharing lately... it's been busy and contemplative these last couple months. I've done the work though to get into the new year with what I need to grow. I'm pretty proud of myself for getting through all of this with zero experience in website building, social media marketing, and patience. This has all come a long way - thank you for joining me on this journey!!
Something else that I've grown through is community involvement. I've been craving this in my life, however I didn't feel that connection in Wisconsin. Moving to Sedona has been the most monumental change in my life. I feel my place in the community and have finally found a sense of home! Since I moved here, I've had many opportunities to volunteer in the community - some being the local film festivals, a vegan festival held at the beginning of the year, the community concert band, and right now I'm helping out with vegan cooking for a transformative New Year's celebration. I've met some wonderful people along the way, and have learned so much about myself as well. For the first time in a long time, I have people in my physical life that I can go and visit, hang out with, and play music with! It's been a long awaited dream of mine to start playing in a band with a few other people. I've worked long and hard to get my skills up so I could do this.. and it is finally manifesting 🤩
Since it is the end of the decade too, why not contemplate what has happened in the 2010's? I'll keep it short here, but man there has been a LOT of growth!
- Graduated high school
- Graduated college
- Traveled to Germany, Austria, Canada (a few times), Ireland, all over the United States (about 40,000 miles or so in road trips)
- Moved to Oregon, back to Wisconsin, and currently Arizona
- Lost three very important people in my life (they're not here physically, but really let me know they're still around!)
- Wrote three books, started following my heart and pursuing my dreams
- Got married!
- Found my newest passion of permaculture and gardening
- Had a spiritual awakening in 2013 that completely changed my life, and the possibilities in life were now limitless to me
Reflection is so powerful guys. Sometimes we can cut ourselves short by feeling like we're not enough, or haven't done enough. When you sit down and type up something like this post; when you truly reflect and celebrate and acknowledge within you what you have been through, what you've accomplished, the MAGIC you've created with your intentions and manifestations - you can really see how powerful you truly are. You can see that you are light, and with every challenge you go through, each dark patch in the journey of life, you leave more and more of that behind and become brighter and brighter. I feel that the decade of 2020 will be monumental. Such great change and great abundance is coming our way.
Take some time today, tomorrow, or even the next two days to practice this for yourself. I can sit and type for hours, but if you have a spare hour to do this for yourself, that is plenty! Grab your journal or open up a blank document on your computer and start reflecting on your year. If you wrote some intentions, or resolutions for 2019, get them out too and see if any of them manifested! Here are some things to help you get started on your reflection, though anything you feel coming up in your heart is worth writing down!
- What lessons have you learned in 2019?
- What goals did you set that you took action on and accomplished?
- How did you grow in 2019?
- What do you feel proud of that you did in 2019?
- How did 2019 feel for you?
- How do you feel now that 2019 is over?
- What lessons have you learned over the past decade?
- How did you grow over the past 10 years?
- Looking back on the past ten years, do you see how things puzzled together for you? In other words, can you see how something that happened 8 years ago makes complete sense now that more time and events have passed?
- What are you most proud of over the past 10 years?
The reflective questions don't have to stop here! If you feel anything come up for you, feel free to add it to your reflections - after all, it is YOUR reflection and YOUR magic that you're writing!
I'll *hopefully* be back in a few days to begin the intention setting post for 2020 and beyond! Like I said, I feel it's going to be a MONUMENTAL year and decade for all of us! Dream as BIG as you can because big dreams do come true!
To end this post, I wanted to send you warm hugs and love and light and many blessings for your New Year's celebrations!
Much love,
Ashley
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