I return again and again to habits. These turn like leaves in the fall, somewhere up North of here, exchanging one color for other ones. Colors of discipline, floundering, returning, again and again. What makes us strong? What keeps us strong? Is it the exchange of one energy for another? Is it the exchange of effort for time? Is it the compensation for the exchange or the exchange itself? Is it conscious habits, or, like turning leaves, the exchange of practice and slow return?

I could return again and again, revisiting, reflecting. Pandemic conditions have been ripe for opportunities such as these, separated from our comfortable nests of fortitude with social distancing and lockdowns. I know it wasn’t discipline and conscious habits which forged 2015; it was exchange based on #connectivity. To make it an abstraction seems sacrilegious so I’ll return to the leaves turning in the fall. Like the Grand Canyon (which I finally got to see this summer), I know if I saw these lighting up the mountainside, I’d cry. The beauty of exchange is it doesn’t really need words (or money) and it becomes invaluable, if we return again and again. I’ve never been sorry I picked up a weight because I know I can do it. I have a relationship with it, as I did with my fellow crossfitters in 2015 (#CFMDstrong).

Here’s a little different idea of #exchange that inspired me to get moving forward, but one shared in my true hippy spirit–I’m all about the magick. May we be blessed in abundance of Earth’s exchange and our healing practices.