Living with Intention: Reflecting on the Year & Embracing Purpose in the future
*** excuse any errors and whatever else you feel so inclined to judge me on***
I think a lot about my old neighbor Paul he was a writer (who survived cancer) and had all these manuscripts and had been working on a movie. I always asked him what he was gonna do with it, because he talked about it so much. He would say “It’s finished…I don’t know”. Right before COVID made its debut his cancer came back pretty aggressively ( I don’t think he had been following up on his scans and appointments).
He passed away during the pandemic and shortly after his family came and cleaned out upstairs. I saw all the boxes of manuscripts being carried out and later I found out they were all just tossed away. No one ever got to see “the script” but Paul.
It’s 2024 and I still feel like it’s March 2020 sometimes in my brain and body. When Paul got admitted to my hospital… and I had to go get him “some belongings” from upstairs. I still think about how his shirts were exactly where he said they would be, “3rd from the left..the blue one”. The nuts he kept in the produce bag, next to the old applesauce jar that was rinsed, label carefully removed, and now was home to something else. I thought “I don’t think I’d ever be able to tell anyone with such clear instructions about my belongings” and at the same time, I took one big look around the room, to take a mental picture. I do this sometimes. I think it’s a photography thing. Or an anxious thing
As a nurse, I knew Paul wasn’t coming home. But I wasn’t gonna tell Paul.
So I grabbed the shirt, the underwear, the jar, and the bag of nuts, and tucked them away in my work bag. I took one more mental picture too.
I think about the astrology reading I had on my couch in January 2020, I think about how deep in my mental anxiety I was before my trip to Palm Springs for Alt Summit in March of that year. How lost I felt, how unaccomplished at life’s checkpoints I am, how confused I was about things, about me, and how I stood in the bathroom looking in the mirror asking for a sign.
On the flight home, I looked at the photo taken of me the day I got there..I was so “out of my body” as the healers like to say. I didn’t even recognize myself in that image. On the last day, I had another photo taken, and in that one..I look like me.. that wrinkle I get in my nose when I’m having fun, the “11 lines” I try to erase with expensive serums.. they were back. Some signs of a spirit with some essence again.
I flew home on the eve of The Dona’s International Women’s Day Event. It was a huge success. I was still in my head though. Fast forward a week later, the city closing down, being a nurse, being very unsure, and being very scared.
I spent the next 3 years very disconnected & connected all at the same time.
Alt Summit - March 2020 - Ace Hotel : Palm Springs
I’ve learned that I can have a plan but “oh wow, is the Universe gonna ‘Out, Donna me’ and just do what she wants”. I gotta be honest this had me feeling a bit defeated a lot over the past few years..but also it’s made me very grateful. That’s an odd dichotomy. It’s a mind fuck sometimes. I’m not gonna lie.
I spent the good part of 2023 dealing with health stuff, being on the other side of the patient experience, and remembering why preventative care is just as important as mental health. How there’s no point in having a soul that feels so alive, without a body that can keep up with it. Mostly an attempt to find a balance between being present, living in the moment, giving energy to what I can control, and being very intentional about the rest. But open to “something greater”. Caring for myself, while also holding onto community.
My word for 2023 was “EASE” and while I haven’t mastered it…I created some of it. I also went with the flow. I took my “plans” and relabeled them as “intentions” and tried my best to stay present.
Last night my husband and I started the Vision Board Brainstorm together [I originally recorded this and made the workshop format in this way so he and I could do it together]. We started on the “Year In Review” Module and while my most “unreal moment” of the past year was getting to see Beyonce first row with one of my best friends {you can watch that here}, it was taken to the next level when we ended up in the Renaissance Film. I gotta admit seeing my face on a screen that big, the first thing I thought was “Wow, either she has a filter on us, or all those skincare products really do work 😂.” And while that’s a great Instagram post, and makes a great dinner convo. The best moments were the everyday ones and the people I was having those conversations with.
This year I put myself out there in a different way. I took some chances and I let myself be a little more cringe
I don’t want to have regrets and I don’t want my work and what I create to end up on the curb, on “large garbage day” like Paul’s. Mostly because, of all my own BS. I think I’m closer to figuring out how to get some of the things I want to create out of my tornado mind. As well as the intention behind it. But mostly I want to help you not have regrets either.
My word/words for 2024 is “I’m Not Regular”
I’m tired of trying to fit myself into a box, slap a label on myself or “pre-chew” what I do so “they” can digest me better. That’s the label - NOT REGULAR.
My mantra for 2024 is “I don’t have a little life, it’s pretty BIG”.
Because I want to approach every little moment like it’s the biggest thing happening to me. I guess this is what I mean by intention. Not some new age spiritual thing, just simply “with purpose”. It allows me to be in it and savor it..without stopping to remind myself to take that “mental photo”.
There’s a lot we cannot control and a lot of generational BS that we didn’t create but have to figure out how to navigate. And there’s so much we can learn to enjoy in the every day (I’m proof of that)..there’s a lot of simple joy we can design for ourselves..and one another. And I owe myself a lot more than the default mode I was taught I should be operating out of. And so do you.
I found out on New Year’s Eve that I’m going to be a speaker at Alt Summit. Crazy huh? That’s the Universe “Out Donna-ing Me” Again. Anyway Welcome to 2024. Let’s get on with this list…shall we?!?
PS: I watched this video everyday of 2023 since it was sent to me..I hope it does for you what it did for me
