What a year 2022 was, hard and strange, and way too fast.

And yet, many beautiful blessings happened too. Significant movement toward long-held dreams.

The only reason I can make progress toward my dreams in such a crazy world is because, every year, I engage in a beautiful process of vision-mapping my year.

Big Dreams Launched, Big Milestones Reached

I launched my Brilliant Playmates creative community in 2022. Hooray! I’ve wanted to create an online community for artists to come together and share their art and their process, get deep support, accountability, and feedback, and experience the power of cross-pollination for years. Finally, I did it.

The results have been beautiful, rewarding, and fun. What a remarkable group of artists has come together with synchronistic threads of mutual interest, particularly in the realms of social justice and collective healing.

I completed an edited draft of my book on how to live a passionate, thriving creative life. And wrote a 50-page book proposal to seek a publisher for the book. A huge milestone for me. I will start sending it out soon and look forward to letting you know about a book deal in the works! (If you want to follow that process more closely and learn the things I learn along the way, join me on Patreon.)

The monthly sacred fire circles I hold for my local community were amazing, rich, and deep. I feel very blessed by the ongoing gifts of fire and by the folks who join me around the fire.

I was able to return to my beloved dance form, Contact Improvisation, in 2022. As always, this proved to be profoundly good for my body and heart and so fun! But my dance-music troupe, Shadow Cabinet, did not meet except to perform once outside. I miss those amazing artists and our work and play together and hope to rekindle that in 2023.

My classes and coaching were consistently wondrous and full of amazing people. I feel so blessed by the folks who are drawn to my work. Thank you!

Challenges, Losses, and Learning

In 2022 I think we collectively hoped we were out of the woods with the madness of the pandemic. And then, we were disappointed to experience lingering effects in social isolation, loss of connections and activities from pre-pandemic days. In weird and disturbing illnesses of many kinds cropping up and cropping up again. In a lack of reliable information. And in ongoing stress around it all.

My husband and I focused quite a bit of energy and resources on getting better prepared for more upheaval in the coming times, living more sustainably, and fostering community. Resilience.org is a good resource for that.

I experienced some profound losses and shifts in 2022. My beloved spiritual mentor, Eliot Cowan, died. And I left my spiritual community. Both of these had been mainstays of my life for 22 years. I felt unmoored and in deep grief. I’m also beginning to harvest blessings of those changes as I step more fully into my gifts as a firekeeper and continue connections with others from that spiritual family.

My dear friend Curt also died. I miss his humor and insight, his caring and his unconventional, questing spirit.

We found out we had to move last Spring because our landlords were selling the house. That was horrible, exhausting, and threw a monkey wrench into some plans for the year. But we recovered and enjoyed an abundant harvest from our garden now that we have more sun.

Getting Down to Brass Tacks

2022 was a year in which I focused on creating a stronger foundation for Brilliant Playground to thrive. This required a lot of nitty-gritty work that was not in my wheelhouse. And some painful reckoning with what was not working.

But I’m also getting a new logo and website that I’m so excited to share with you soon. The best part is making things run more smoothly, being able to serve all of you even better, and being ready to reach more people with my sacred work.

Reading, Writing, and More

I also shared 60 delicious posts with my patrons on Patreon. These include my works-in-progress, finished creations, stories about my process, creative life, and what I learned along the way. Also, my regular What’s Inspiring Me posts.

If you’re not a patron, and you’re curious, come check it out. Your support helps keep a roof over my head and you get a ridiculous ton of benefits for a few dollars a month.

Because of working so hard on my book on creativity, writing poems, getting published, and giving readings took a back seat. Nonetheless, I was surprised to discover that I typed up 44 new poem drafts and still managed to get 5 things published last year, including my very first book reviews.

2022 was a good year for reading. I read 49 books plus parts of 6 more and read aloud from 8 more with my sweetie. I’ll work on a post about my favorite books of 2022.

Nothing ever goes exactly as planned. That’s the nature of life. But, when you have clearly-defined, soul-centered dreams and goals, plus a good map to reach them, you experience more fulfillment, joy, and grace. And you can weather the storms better because you have a way to stay aligned with your heart path.

To your beautiful new year,

Maxima