New Year and Creating a Tarot Spread

I've put off writing my first blog post of the year for a bit. I have been going through some difficulties and frustrations related to my chronic illness. Lately, I have been unable to meditate, do visualizations, or journey. Doing so creates bad brain fog and fatigue flares. I think this is because they are fairly intense mental concentration and exertion. For people with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and many other chronic illnesses, mental exertion can be just as debilitating as physical exertion. This difficulty has led me to feel a lot of frustration about how am I going to cope with the loss of those skills/tools with my spiritual practice. I've been feeling very disconnected and out of sorts.

All of that is starting to resolve. I've been exploring some different aspects of energetic healing, mostly having to do with color. I'm not sure how keen I am on the chakras concept. I have a hard time reconciling chakras with what I know of physiology. But I am interested in the concepts of the four elements (Earth, Air, Fire, Water) and their associations (Body, Mind, Energies/Will/Passions/Creativity, Emotions) and incorporating color and crystal energy healing into that. So I'll be exploring more of that as time goes on. I feel really called to work with color energy (including in the form of crystals and stones). The readings I've done lately have shown that this is a good area for me to focus on.

I also came up with a Tarot spread today. There's a quote that I've seen several times recently that I've come to resonate with a lot.
     Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.    ~Arthur Ashe
It seems to be a quote that is an energetic focus for me lately. I was doing some thinking this morning and came up with a Tarot spread inspired by this quote.

• Where am I?
• What do I have?
• What can I do?

I did a personal reading using this spread this morning, with both the Oracle of the Shapeshifters and the Tarot of the Magical Forest. The reading was quite personal and VERY meaningful to me, so I'd prefer not to share it here. The reading helped me to make a difficult decision on where to place my focus on some things for now and what I need to let go of for now. It tied into my 2016 yearly overall reading that I did previously. This tied a few things together and helped clarify some things that I needed to hear but are a bit difficult to face. Nothing to worry about it, just some personal stuff. It's a good thing and this new spread was very helpful for me today. So I wanted to share it with you. After I finished the readings I thought of one final question that could be included.

• How do I start?

I haven't read for that question as I already had a few things in mind for how I might start. But it would be a good addition to the spread.

I hope you are all having a good start to the New Year.