New Starts and Nine Year Cycles

Looking forward, taking stock

Photo by Dakota Krupp on Unsplash

In the days leading up to the new year, I like to think about where I’ve been, what I’ve accomplished, and what I need to do going forward.

Normally that involves looking at the year that’s ending. This year-end I took the long view.

Nine Year Cycles

Earlier this month, a friend shared a video on nine year cycles—and I shared a poem I’d written on the very first day of our current cycle.

January 1st, 2017.

I wasn’t thinking about cycles when I wrote that poem. I didn’t realize that 2017 was a number 10 (numerological one) year and the start of new nine year cycle. I’m not sure if I even knew what a nine year cycle was then or why it was important.

But I knew a new start when I saw one.

New Year's day was a Sunday that year. I was just coming out of a nine year spiritual journey that had begun with an incredible dream and ended in disappointment and confusion.

But that moment, that Sunday, that January 1st felt like the beginning of everything. Not in a hopeful happy way. In a one foot in front of the other kind of way.

I had no idea where I was going. So I went in and wrote the poem and I kept on going.

My Last Cycle

Over the next nine years I went from metaphysics to Christianity. I lost people. I closed my card reading business. I stopped blogging.

I worked my way through three very different Christian denominations. And when I finally sat down to write my return-to-the-church testimony, I found I couldn’t reconcile any of them with what I believed.

So I took some courses at the Rhine Institute. I learned a bit about the science of what I called spirit. I began to dream again. I noticed a wonderful synchronicity.

The mystery of the big dream I had some 18 years earlier, finally made sense.

Things happened.

I put my heart into a story and saw it fail. I wrote and rewrote and didn’t publish anything. I began to understand how I tell stories—and why.

I enrolled in dream school. I returned to tarot. I read Jung.

In 2022, I was diagnosed with autism. In 2025 I was diagnosed with ADHD. I started to see my life through a completely different lens.

I went back to blogging.

2008 was a year of wild optimism and excitement—hard on the heels of the worst decade of my life.

2017 was a do over I didn’t want but could not avoid.

Now, 2026 is the start of another cycle. None of us can predict where the next nine years will take us—but that won’t stop us from trying.

Where (I Think) I’m Going

When I look at cycles past, it occurs to me that one of the easiest ways to figure out where we’re going next is to look at what we’re on the brink of now. In my case, that means publishing.

My vampire story is finished. After one last proof and a lifetime of orphaned manuscripts, I’m going to publish my first novel. I understand now why people didn’t like draft 1 and why those same people probably won’t like the finished product. I know that my story isn’t really about vampires. Whether it gets read or not, I’m glad I wrote it.

My memoir is almost done. It isn’t a return-to-the-church testimony anymore but it is the truth as I know it. Getting there was part synchronicity, part muse.

Which is, as it turns out, my process.

To me, this year and this cycle was a year of planting, not of harvest, but I’m okay with that. Because I am on the brink of putting things out there and that has been a very long time coming.

A Card Reading

And because every new cycle deserves a card reading, here is mine:

This reading is for the entire nine year cycle.

Death is appropriate for the past. The 4 of Swords makes perfect sense for where I’m at right now. The 10 of Wands is what’s coming and it is not unexpected. My “need to know” card is the Hermit (card 9 in the major arcana) which is a card of great personal meaning to me. The 6 of Wands jumped out along with it.

I encourage you to take some time today to take a look back at the year and cycle you’ve just completed and think about what is on the way.

Wishing you a wonderful new year and a meaningful new turn around the wheel—however you measure it!

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You can read my 2017 poem and my post on the Hermit card below: