New beginings!

Ah, it's a new year. Thank goodness!
Today I took ALL my Christmas stuff down and packed it all away for next year.
I replaced Christmas things in my kitchen window with this gorgeous old meat cleaver my Dad gave me for Christmas '08. I love hanging stuff by ribbons and I think this orange and black striped one gives it an extra ominous appeal.

Unfortunately as the day wore on I get sicker and sicker:( No fair! I had strep before Christmas and got just well enough in time to get together with my family on Christmas day, thankfully. I often get sick a few times in a row, what a gyp. So now I am up with my head burning & snotty writing in my blog at 4 A.M.
While packing up my Christmas things I remembered going through that ritual after Christmas of '04 and writing myself a note tucked away so that I would find it the next year, a little time capsule.
I planned on attending The American College of the Building Arts in '05 and I knew the next Christmas would find me in a world I could not yet imagine. I tried to picture myself living in Charleston S.C. as an architectural restoration student; new town, new job, new friends, new life. How exciting!
Here is a picture I took last May when the inaugural class graduated. This is a student's example of ornamental plaster restoration which was my major.

And this is the Charleston City Jail which the school has been working on restoring for years and houses their main offices. It is absolutely gorgeous and crammed with history. Yankee prisoners were held inside during the Civil War and you can read their graffiti scratched into the walls inside.
Long story short; it wasn't meant to be after all. I moved there August 2005, started school on the 18th, and developed a debilitating illness on September 15th, my Mom's birthday.


After months of driving between there and back to my Dr. in Charlotte and missing school it was decided that I would withdraw that semester with the option to start over in '06.....

For a time, Charleston was the city that broke my heart, with it's achingly beautiful live oaks and haunting old graveyards; it will always remain my one true love.

......but that was not my path after all and after much heartache I am here, now, much wiser and much more certain of what I am doing.....
That's the short version. These past 5 years have felt more like 10 and I am astounded at the ways my life has changed. Those first few years I was completely broken hearted, broken down...broken. But like a phoenix I have risen out of the ashes to be born anew. I put myself back together. I am always looking with an open heart and an open mind for the path before me.

This is how I see my life; every moment of every day I make choices, like a map with many different paths. Maybe it's true that for every choice you can make a new universe opens up with that version of you going down that path, infinite versions of yourself are being created at every moment...but I can only be one Dusti at a time (I'm not completely crazy)!
This Dusti is always looking for the best fork in the road. I have to believe that there is one true life that is the best one, one path on the map that will lead me to my greatest self.
Life is like a many forked roller coaster ride swish-swooshing by very fast, you have to decide "right, left or straight"! Like those Chose Your Own Adventure books when I was a kid; surely there is an optimum outcome, right?
This year I will hang on tight and enjoy the ride, and trust that a combination of good sense, strong intuition and bravery will serve me well on this journey.