Have you ever wondered what is next? Where your path is leading? What you will become next? Some people work a career their entire life and then retire. Some raise children and become entrepreneurs, like myself. I have reinvented what I do so many times because I have so many interests but they all really dance around each other. They are all interconnected.
I breathe in the cool morning air as the sunrise reaches rose pink across the winter sky and crows hover about.
I lead an enchanted life of miraculous happenings, unusual animal and bird sightings, healings, and things happen to us that just do not make sense in the cookie cutter mind of our world. This thrills me. But there must be a reason why I see these things. Experience these things.
I have an influential voice. That comes with responsibility to make sure that I am speaking and teaching what is compassionate and what is beautiful and what is real. Before bed I ask my ancestors and friends to help me see answers to what is next. The pictures in my dreams are always of me leading a group. Or of me being a type of Martha Stewart with a compassionate twist. I love creating; whether it be gardens or art or words or great food or inspiration or encouragement or a new life.
The Universe has seemingly freed up some time for me. I have time to do something. I teach herbalism courses and shaman courses and I write and help with the shop and answer the apothecary phone and help people. I’ll be on a radio show next week talking about my herbalism and plants in homesteading and promoting my book, Homesteader Pharmacy (click to see on Amazon).
There is more though. I am on the cusp of something. I am not just an herbalist. Our goal is to pay off debt this year. I want to work towards getting a farm and animal sanctuary in the future, but in the here and now….ideas swirl overhead like dust devils but don’t quite land.
I fill my time just fine and come summer I will be really busy with gardens and wildcrafting and markets but there is just something below the surface that ties in everything that I do. Something to give me purpose. I have been working on a book for the past year. I put it aside in order to write a novel. I wrote said novel but I can’t say I am a great fiction writer. I am a non-fiction writer. This book keeps bobbing to the surface. It just needs some dedication. Writing a few hours a day has to make the to-do list.
I know I am more than just an herbalist. It used to consume twenty-four hours a day for me but my daughter has taken on most of the work. Finding my other passions and moments of inspiration are what I need to ponder. Something to tie them all together…
Now, where are you on your journey?
Farmgirl School 
From one nonfiction writer to another, I get it. When I retired (I like to call it repurposed), I was thrilled to finally have time for gardening and food preservation–two major activities from my childhood that I’d never had time to delve into with marriage, homemaking, children, and career. I also rediscovered writing. Discovered for the first time, in a way, because it had come in such rare spurts and always for very brief periods. Now I write almost every day. And on the days I write, I’m likely to do nothing else. I’m trying to modulate that a bit. These winter days should be perfect for writing, but they get to me when I’m not up and about and exercising something besides my mind. Good luck in finding your “what’s next.” I’d wager it will come to you organically.