The Long View
In the days leading up to the new year, I like to think about where I’ve been. What I’ve accomplished. And what I’ve yet to do.
Normally that involves looking at the year just passed. This year I took the long view.
This year, a friend shared a video on nine year cycles. I shared a poem I’d written nine years ago, on the very first day of a brand new cycle. The one that began on January 1st, 2017.
I wasn’t thinking about cycles when I wrote that poem. I didn’t realize that 2017 was number 10 year or that it reduced to 1 which made it the start of new cycle. I’m not sure if I even knew what a nine year cycle was then or why it was important.
But I knew a new start when I saw one.
January 1st, 2017 was a Sunday. I was standing on the back porch looking out into a dead yard. Just coming out of a nine year spiritual journey that had begun with an incredible dream and ended in disappointment and confusion.
But that moment, that Sunday, that January 1st felt like the beginning of everything. Not in a hopeful happy way. In the way of grim determination.
I had no idea where I was going. So, I went in and wrote the poem.
My Last Cycle
Over the next nine years I went from metaphysics to Christianity. I rejected people. I closed my card reading business. I stopped blogging.
I worked my way through three very different Christian denominations. And when I finally set down to write my return-to-the-church testimony, I found I couldn’t reconcile any of them to what I already knew to be true.
So I took some courses at the Rhine Institute. I learned something of the science of what, for want of a better word, I call spirit. I began to dream again. I noticed a wonderful synchronicity.
The mystery of the big dream I had in 2008 at the beginning of the cycle before this one began to make sense.
Things happened.
I enrolled in dream school. I returned to tarot and everything that went along with it. I read Jung.
I put my heart into a story and saw it shredded. I wrote and wrote and didn’t publish and I began to understand how I tell stories—and why.
I was diagnosed with autism in 2022. In 2025 I was diagnosed with ADHD. I began to see my life through a completely different lens.
And I went back to blogging.
2008 was a year of wild optimism and excitement—hard on the heels of the worst decade of my life.
2017 was a do over I didn’t want but could not avoid.
2026 is the start of another cycle. None of us can predict where the next nine years will take us—but that won’t stop us from trying.
Where (I Think) I’m Going
When I look at cycles past, it occurs to me that one of the easiest ways to figure out where we’re going next is to look at what we’re on the brink of now. In my case, that means publishing.
My vampire story is finished. After one last proof, I’m going to publish my first. I understand now why people didn’t like draft 1 and why those same people probably won't like the finished product. I know it’s not really about vampires. Whether it gets read or not, I’m glad I wrote it.
My memoir is almost done. It has helped me piece together all the cycles. Over the course of writing it, it has become a very different kind of testimony. Figuring it out was part synchronicity, part muse.
Which is, as it turns out, my process.
To me, this year and this cycle was a year of planting, not of harvest but I’m okay with that. Because I am on the brink of putting things out there and that has been a very long time coming.
A Card Reading
And because every new year and new cycle deserves a card reading, here is mine:
This reading is for the entire nine year cycle. Death is appropriate for the past. The 4 of Swords makes perfect sense for where I’m at right now. The 10 of Wands is what’s coming and it is not unexpected. My “need to know” card is the Hermit which is a card of great personal meaning to me. The 6 of Wands jumped out with it.
I encourage you to take some time today to take a look back at the year and cycle you’ve just completed and think about what’s coming. This is where the magic is.
Wishing you a wonderful new year and a meaningful new turn around the wheel, however you measure it!
You can read my 2017 poem and my post on the Hermit card below:
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