The Chinese year of the dragon just started a couple of days ago. After reading about the characteristics attributed to those born dragons, I wish I were a dragon rather than...a sheep. Really, a sheep? Characteristics such as smart, artistic, kind and happy are good enough, I suppose, and do describe me reasonably well, although I'm not as fond of the less complimentary adjectives reserved, insecure and dependent.
Dragons, however, dragons are innovative, enterprising, flexible, self-assured, brave and passionate. Of course, they have their negative traits, too: conceited, tactless, scrutinizing, unanticipated and quick-tempered.
I need to be a dragon to make the most of the fortune I received in my cookie at Fu Kung last week: Approach all areas of life with a bold enthusiasm this year! (Okay, the exclamation point is mine, but doesn't that fortune need one? I think so.)
I love that fortune. I adopt it as my motto for the year, if not longer. I am enthusiastically planning many adventures this year, big and small. Of course, the biggest is likely to be my trip to Bangkok and Bhutan, but just as important are plans to take Rowan back to Fielding Lake in July and to attend my first writer's conference in June (the Kachemak Bay Writer's Conference in Homer). Unfortunately, it also looks like I'll be having the less pleasant adventure of shoulder surgery, but now is not the time for such a downer - more on that another day.
All of these adventures will require the best of those dragon characteristics: innovative, flexible, self-assured, brave and passionate. Even enterprising is likely to work its way in somehow. Of course, my sheep characteristics of kind and happy will stand me in good stead and make encountering new people and cultures much easier.
So, to boldly go where no woman has gone before! Oh, wait, that's the wrong statement. It fits, though. To boldly and enthusiastically go where this woman has not gone before! That's what I'm doing this year.
