Photo by Andrik Langfield on Unsplash

Happy belated New Year! I’m mostly back from my extended break after a productive, in-depth review of 2023.

As I wrote in December’s Happy Little Thoughts, I did not accomplish many personal or professional goals in 2023. I spent most of the year navigating grief and the practical and administrative matters related to two deaths, and it was all I could do to keep my own life somewhat functional. When I wasn’t doing those things, I was mentally and emotionally recovering from doing them.

But now things are starting to settle down*. Starting a new year feels like starting fresh.

Choosing a word of the year

As usual, I have been pondering the choice of a word of the year. I would like 2024 to be, as professional sports teams call it, “a rebuilding year.” Now that I’m no longer responsible for caring for my mother-in-law, I can begin to think again of what I want to accomplish.

I toyed with the idea of rebuild as a word of the year, but it didn’t feel quite right. My circumstances have changed. My dreams have changed. My tolerance levels for some things have changed. I’m staring down a milestone birthday. Instead of rebuilding what I had before, as great as it was, I want to build a life I love, one that makes me happy to wake up in the morning, on the foundation of my old life. If that makes sense.

Here’s the quote, from Jamie Varon, that inspired me to choose build as my word of the year:

“Imagine the woman you want to be. Think of what her daily life, her habits, and routines would be. Start showing up to those habits and routines, start building them, step by step, and day by day. You don’t become her like magic. You build her. Start building.”

Words of support

Knowing that I am still somewhat shaky emotionally (especially considering what’s been going on with Tank—see * below), I’m choosing a couple of “background” words to support build: restore, gentle. At least right now, I’m not up for any major disruptive changes. I am up for building small habits, little by little, gently, while allowing time for restoration.  

After I wrote down some big goals I want to achieve in 2024, I broke them down into smaller goals, sometimes into something I can achieve in a month. Some of these subgoals are process goals, like “work on [insert project here] 15 minutes 3 times a week.” January has been kind of a trial run, as I figure out how to build the habits I want.

Some fun supportive practices

Thinking about choosing your own word of the year? That’s only the first step. While you can leave it to chance, if you want to make the most of the practice of choosing a word of the year, it helps to keep that word uppermost in your mind. Here are a few supportive practices I’ve heard about and might try this year: 

• Keep a notebook to record ways your word of the year has shown up in your life
• Create a Pinterest board for your word of the year
• Create a vision board focusing on your word of the year
• Put your word of the year on sticky notes and post them in strategic places.

What feels different?

I feel a certain determination I haven’t felt before. A few of my goals have migrated from year to year without my making any real headway on them and I want that to stop. I feel more likely to look for solutions and work arounds when I hit a roadblock, rather than giving up at the first significant obstacle. One lesson I learned from losing my mom and mother-in-law is that you don’t have all the time in the world. If you want to do it, do it. Do not keep putting off things that are important to you. Build the life you want now.

Do you choose a word of the year? If you’d like to share, please do in the comments below!

Read about past words of the year here, here, and here.

*Last week, my horse, Tank, developed some kind of serious mystery ailment and for the past week I’ve been alternating between hope and despair. As I write this post, he is doing better and I’m cautiously optimistic that he’ll pull through. He’s due to come home from the vet hospital tomorrow.

Photo by Amador Loureiro on Unsplash

The practice of choosing a word of the year is meaningful to me, probably because words are meaningful to me. Since 2010, I’ve chosen a one-word theme each year (except for 2013—I either didn’t choose one, or I didn’t write it down anywhere I can find it now). My word of the year is often something I aspire to (“flow”), or want to have more of (“delight”). I try to choose a word which will influence many areas of my life, one with layers of meaning I hope to discover over time. Some years I’ve found my word meaningful, while others I’ve barely thought of it, or it wound up being a mismatch for what the year turned out to hold (I’m looking at you, “Dare”/ 2021).

Photo by Maddi Bazzocco on Unsplash

When I wrote “I’m not even going to try to guess what 2022 holds, but I am going to stay optimistic and open” in my first post of the year, I couldn’t have guessed what the year would hold, and I’m actually grateful for that!

We can never “know” what’s coming (though sometimes we can guess). All we can do is savor the happy times, and build a foundation of resilience and a network of support for the hard ones. To stay “optimistic and open,” even when it’s hard. (And forgive ourselves when we fail at that.)

We can also cling to practices which help us feel grounded and give a shape and structure to our lives. Today I’d like to share my mid (-ish) year review of my efforts to shape 2022 so far.

Word of the Year (WOTY)

With the unavoidable complications of caregiving, “simpler” has been a great focus word. Here are a few ways I’m applying the concept of simpler:

I’ve continued to declutter my house. I’ve been watching YouTube videos by The Minimal Mom to maintain motivation, and one of the concepts she’s brought to my attention is that it’s all about “inventory management.” How much “stuff” do you want to manage?  I’m not a minimalist, but I do find a less cluttered environment contributes to a calmer mind. 

I’ve stripped my writing down to the bare minimum. This isn’t my favorite practice, but right now it’s the right choice. I simply don’t have the emotional and mental bandwidth to write much. (Though if the right project or idea comes along, I’ll make an exception!)

I’m breaking tasks into smaller, simpler steps.  For example, we want to touch up the paint in our bedroom. My task for this week was “Find out if we have the paint we need or if we have to buy more.” (Note: This will take approximately three minutes…and yet, here it is Friday and I haven’t done it yet! Since it is such a small step, though, I will probably manage to do it. This is why I need to break things down into tiny steps.)

“22 in 22”

In January, I’d only put about 10 things on my “22 in 22” list; now I’m up to 19. My entries range in difficulty from “buy new pjs” to “West Coast visit with Mom, Shy, and Kerri.” I’ve accomplished nine of the 19 (including the two just mentioned), with another three in progress. Considering what 2022 has wrought, I’m pretty happy with this. And I still have almost half the year to go.

The Happiness Jar

Even though I forget some weeks, I’m still dropping slips of paper in the Happiness Jar on a regular basis. It looks like this now:

I’m adding a reminder to my informal weekly planning session so I don’t keep forgetting. This little project really does make me happy.

What else?

No surprise here, I’ve been reading a lot! Books old and new, from my TBR shelf and from the library. I’m still working through my personal reading project, “Agatha in Order” (reading Agatha Christie’s novels in the order they were published). I’ve also been listening to more audio books. (Is anyone interested in a reading round-up post?)

Tank is living his best life, roaming a 15-acre property with a “gang” of older geldings. I ride once a week on average, an easy hack around the property with the occasional trot thrown in (he’s in better shape than I am for this). The heat and humidity of the Florida summer preclude doing much more than that, even if we wanted to. 

Tank (in front) with best buddy Bubba

My sketching practice is still largely theoretical, though I did do two or three sketches while I was in California in June. One of the undone “22 in 22” entries.

Future plans

I’m keeping them simple(r). Continue to experiment with ways to make sketching a habit rather than an event. Continue to declutter. Continue to slow down and take it one day at a time. Work on those tiny steps.

Lessons learned

Or, rather, lessons I’m in the process of learning… Hard things get easier over time. Letting go of perfectionism is more important—and more complicated—than I thought. Don’t wait if there’s something you really want. You never know when something may happen that makes it impossible to go after your desires.

I hope the first half of 2022 has brought you both joy and challenge—and that you’re on your way to reaching your own most desired dreams for the year.

How has your year been so far? Do you have any plans for the last half of 2022?

Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash

How have the first two weeks of the new year been treating you?

I’m finally taking a breath after a whirlwind last couple of weeks of 2021, another year I’m not sorry to put behind me. I’ve spent the last couple of weeks recovering (I’m so tired…you?) and regrouping. (Read: digging out my office which has become, once again, a Pit of Despair.)

The beginning of a new year is a natural place to think about goals and changes you want to make. But this year, instead of planning a whole year’s worth of goals, or diving head first into the deep end, I’m taking a gentler approach overall. For example:

Word of the year

Remember my word of the year (WOTY), dare, from last year? Probably not, because after that first optimistic post, I don’t think I revisited it on the blog even once. And not much more often in private. Too many varied and disrupting events took place in 2021, and dare just didn’t fit well with how the year played out. In this instance, choosing a word of the year was kind of like when health experts try to match the annual flu vaccine with the flu strains expected to be circulating…and fail!

In retrospect, a better WOTY for 2021 would have been “survive.”

So anyway, as 2021 wound down, a word kept reappearing in my consciousness, and as I usually do when that happens, I’ve taken it as my WOTY for 2022:

Simpler.

Not shiny or glamorous, but fitting, in that the past two years have made me hunker down and reevaluate my life in unexpected ways. I’m looking forward to seeing how simpler influences how the year unfolds. Two things that come to mind immediately are the way I cook (my menu planning and cooking need a revamp that makes them simpler) and what I concentrate on in my writing. I’ve been chasing too many different types of writing projects and I’ve managed both to lose the joy of writing as well as dilute my focus and skill level. I’m sure more will come to my attention as the year goes on.

(Two of my online friends have also chosen words of the year. Read their posts here and here.)

Goal setting/yearly planning

I’m very good at complicating things, overscheduling, and being wound too tightly. Rushing, rushing, rushing. Fitting more in when I should take more time to do fewer things. (Another way in which simpler may help.)

I came across this sentence in something I read (forgive me, I can’t remember where I found it), and this sums up what I want for 2022:

“I want a year of ease and serendipity and settling into the spaces of my life in a way that feels organic instead of molded to fit arbitrary goals I set for myself.”

I’m slowing way down. Being a lot more deliberate. There are a few things on my “I’d like to accomplish” list for 2022. I’m using Gretchen Rubin’s “22 for 22” framework, but I only have about 10 things listed so far. 

What I’m not doing

I’m not doing any reading challenges. I’m not going on a diet. I’m not “making big plans,” at least not yet. 

And speaking of plans, I just finished reading Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, by Oliver Burkeman (Amazon, Bookshop, no affiliation), which is not about time management in the traditional way at all. This passage resonated:

“…planning is an essential tool for constructing a meaningful life, and for exercising our responsibilities toward other people. The real problem isn’t planning. It’s that we take our plans to be something they aren’t. What we forget, or can’t bear to confront, is that, in the words of the American meditation teacher Joseph Goldstein, ‘a plan is just a thought.’ We treat our plans as though they are a lasso, thrown from the present around the future, in order to bring it under our command. But all a plan is—all it could ever possibly be—is a present-moment statement of intent. It’s an expression of your current thoughts about how you’d ideally like to deploy your modest influence over the future. The future, of course, is under no obligation to comply.”

Almost none of my plans over the past two years have come to fruition. I’m disappointed, but at the same time, simply grateful to be alive and relatively unscathed. I’m not even going to try to guess what 2022 holds, but I am going to stay optimistic and open. To continue to embrace simple pleasures and everyday adventures—and to share any happy discoveries with you.

Do you have any special plans for 2022? What is your word of the year?

For more easy, beginning-of-the-year inspiration, check out these links:

The Soul + Wit podcast, “Less Hustle, More Happiness.” 

The Action for Happiness Happier January calendar.

Photo by Siora Photography on Unsplash

I’ve been trying to cling to some vestiges of normalcy in these far from normal times, so as I’ve done for the past few years, I’ve chosen a word of the year to be a sort of one-word guidance system. I say I chose it, but really, it chose me, because this word is not one I would normally gravitate to.

The word is dare.

Dare strikes me as a bossy word—at first glance, it sounds like a word that is going to make me do a whole lot of things I don’t want to do, as in “I dare you to…” After the exhausting slog of 2020, I’m skeptical of my ability to live up to a word like dare. However, one of my online friends called it, more charitably, a strong word. OK, we’ll go with that. Maybe I can draw strength from it as well as be pushed by it?

I’m willing to take on dare because after some thought and exploration (and consulting a thesaurus and dictionary, thanks to a friend’s suggestion). I’m choosing to focus on the meanings of to take heart, try one’s hand, venture, to have sufficient courage to try. Dare is also associated with imaginative or vivacious boldness. I kind of like the sound of that.

Also, for the first time, I created an acronym to correspond with the word’s letters (hat tip to another friend for this idea). Here it is:

D: Dream (because dreaming starts everything)

A: Act (dreams won’t become reality without action)

R: Recharge (after taking action, I’ll need to recharge)

E: Evaluate (evaluate the result of my action to see what comes next)

Where will dare take me? I don’t know yet, but I have some projects in the works that I might not have decided to tackle without the support of such a strong word.

If 2020 taught me anything, it’s that I shouldn’t put off things I want to do—there’s no guarantee the future will be anything resembling the past. It’s up to me to figure out what I really want to do/be/have, and try to make those things happen. No one is going to do it for me.

Have you chosen a word of the year for 2021? I dare you!

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

Free

Soften

Words working together

Photo courtesy Andrew Martin via Pixabay

“Olive was particularly inspired by dawns like this when she could not see the sun. It gave her strength and comfort to know that it was out there, rising, doing its daily job, unthwarted by clouds, rain or snow. That’s the way she liked to think of herself. Against the impediments and disappointments of life, she was a riser.”

Photo by Carolyn V on Unsplash

Choose a Word of the Year

Adopt a “Do More ______, Do Less_____” philosophy

Commit to a 30- or 90-day challenge

Make a list of simple pleasures and everyday adventures you want to experience

Write a letter to your future self

Start a gratitude journal, jotting down at least one thing you’re grateful for every day

Join the 7 Things x 2018 Challenge

1. Take Tank to the beach. Yes, really.
2. Go to the library to write (the only downside is I can’t take my coffee with me).
3. Take a week’s “staycation” (or maybe several long weekends?).
4. Go to a Tampa Bay Rays game with my mom when she visits in August.
5. Sketch in my sketchbook. Maybe even finish—i.e., fill all the pages of—a sketchbook!
6. Make homemade frozen pops. I never got around to doing it last summer.
7. Try a month of unlimited classes at Karma. 
8. Spend a day by the pool.
9. Go to the beach at sunset with my husband.
10. Rewatch The Princess Bride and Support Your Local Sheriff (my cat is named after the female lead in this movie).
11. Try the new gelato place in town.
12. Make pesto with the basil from my garden. (Done!)