January 17th Challenge: Shed Some Skin

"Loves Me", prayer flags, Renee Zangara

Slogging on through a month of challenges--oh, that feels heavy.  Today, let's get rid of some excess weight.  

Way back in early 2014, those of you who accepted the month of tiny resolutions challenge wrote down a few things you want to leave behind this year.  Please refresh your memory.  Weren't here for that part?  Go write them now.

Today's challenge is to make manifest this desire through a real or symbolic letting go.  Take care of some unfinished business.  Resolve, at least for today, to do that thing that is the opposite action of the one you want to leave behind.  Letting go of an old resentment?  Do a splendid ritual and bury it with ceremony.  Getting rid of psychological Samsonites?  Make yourself a whole new bag, baby, and fill it with reminders of what it is you want.

For tips on rituals and creative play for bringing in and purging, try Rob Brezny's book "Pronoia", the antidote to paranoia.  You can get a preview:  "A Spell to Re-Genius Yourself".

Some things are best left behind:  tonight at Goodwill store

If that's too much, just take a trip to Goodwill and divest some of life's detritus in a more concrete fashion.  But to up the ante, try to find at least one item to discard that no longer fits the life you want to be in.

"Thoughts and Longings" , porcelain casts by Amanda Salov

Thanks to Susan Peck for suggesting today's post and quote.  from Arcadia, spoken by Septimus, tutor to Thomasina: “We shed as we pick up, like travelers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind. The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. But there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it."


Song of the day: 
 Photos of prayer flags and slip-cast sweetgums are of two of three artists whose works are on exhibit just two more days at the Arts Center of Corvallis in the "Thoughts and Longings" show.  Hurry up and see them if you're able.