Some years come in like sun after a rainstorm, shining a new light on things, making everything seem shiny, clean and full of promise. Some years don’t seem to come in at all. They just slink into being while continuing everything that went before in an unbroken trudge. Other years come in with a *bang* which throws everything into the air and pulverizes the plans we’ve made into fine dust. Not only can we not put the broken pieces back together, there are no pieces of those plans left to find. We just have to go back to the drawing board and start fresh.

And then there’s this year. For some, 2017 is a year full of reality. After a schizophrenic year of shrieking about what could be, should be, and shouldn’t be, fighting for a hypothetical future while struggling to stay grounded in the present, people have whiplashed into a now which didn’t wait for them but kept moving forward with its regular rhythm. Words had meaning, actions had short/medium/long-term consequences, and the road ahead is like a looking at a field where unlabeled seed packets got sown. There’s no way to know what will grow from it and the question is, Do you wait to see or do you plow it all under and start over?”

For others this year is one of unfolding. Dreams, plans, opportunities, healing, and enlightenment got initiated in 2016. Positive things got set into motion and the prospects look good. Things were rocky, the positives were surprising and sometimes like gifts thrown over the transom out of nowhere, but now they are here. So the task ahead is to shake off the debris, like rescuing items after a storm, and checking to see what state they are in. Once we know what we’ve got to work with and what’s already in motion, we can see our way clear to move forward.