April has been a tough month for me.

I started out with so many plans. So many goals. The first week hit and I retired to my bed and to sleep. It felt amazingly good…although the guilt of 1 not keeping up with a nearly daily post here and 2 not working consistently on my novel every single day worked my nerves worse than anticipated. Gone are the days when I can tell myself it’s all fine and I can simply pick up where I left off and get moving again.

However, that was a good lesson for me. That, yes, I can just pick up where I left off…that sometimes letting things go (and not bothering to wash much more than the bare necessities for two weeks, laundry-wise: laundry is my arch nemesis.) and just resting, sleeping, vegging out…or sinking into that novel you picked up the day before and not moving for hours and hours until you finish the story completely can be a healthy and fortifying thing…at least it is for me.

This month’s New Moon (April 11) is the first New Moon of Spring, and it is an Aries New Moon…the New Moon is all about New Beginnings, as is Spring….fresh new energy after the hibernation of winter…Spring Cleaning…and Aries…terrific for new beginnings as it is all about movement and energy and getting things done…yeah, but not all of that is appropriate for me. Spring for me equals massive allergy issues. I live surrounded by ornamental pear trees — trees so devastating to the local environment that the MO Department of Conservation will give you a brand-new native tree to plant if you show them a photo of the ornamental pear you cut down…and Oak trees of all sorts (pin oak is the most common, but not the only one) and pecan trees — which may actually be the death of me at some point. Add in all the other random pollens and the flower pollens and grass pollens … and there I am, eyes swelling, sucking down fluids, trying to work with 1 my asthma and 2 prescription Flonase-like spray 3 swollen itchy eyes and 4 the absolute lethargy of the overwhelm from my body fighting its usual battles added on top of the pollen allergies that OTC allergy medications, two different kinds in fact on really bad days, and this whole let’s get up and dance our way through spring cleaning morning noon and night…just ain’t gonna happen.

But, I do have new goals…most especially my new novel. Not the one I have worked on in my head for years…and not the one I originally sat down and wrote out a basic outline for–but it is the novel that wants to be written and it is the one I want to write. That is enough for me. Although I had pledged fifteen minutes a day every day of this month and every month hereafter that I would write and work on this novel until I was finished writing the first horrible draft, it’s hasn’t worked out that way due to exhaustion.

Exhaustion has not stopped everything — or anything really — completely. It has slowed things down. So even as I continue to make plans, examine options, open doors and open windows….I am not rushing into things the way I normally would. Perhaps that is what the Universe is telling me. Slow down. Slow and steady wins the race. So, I continue to move forward, sometimes more quickly, sometimes more slowly.

How is your month, your year, going? Are you still working with your word of the year? Let me know in the comments below.