Encapsulate the year 2013 in one word. Explain why you’re choosing that word. Now, imagine it’s one year from today, what would you like the word to be that captures 2014 for you? (Gwen Bell)
This is one of the original challenge questions, and I've been asking it every year. For this challenge I
decided to go back and look at what I’d written other years:
My word for 2010 would be
“Busy”
I took on too much. Too
many things and projects that I love, but I’ve come to realize that loving what
you do is not enough. Apparently you can’t have everything, so next year I want
my word to be “balance”. I hope next year I get it right.
To describe 2011, I have to go with love.
Its been busy, there has
been chaos and madness, but the bottom line is that I am constantly and
continuously surrounded by love. My kids, my husband, my parents, my
mother in law, my sisters, my brother, my grandma, my nephews, my cousins....
they were there for me, they are there for me, and that -as the Mastercard add
puts it- is priceless.
My word for 2012 has to be "marathon."
It just felt like one constant run
where I barely got a change to come up for air. There was just too much stuff
going on. A lot of great stuff, some bad stuff too, but most of the time life
looked out of focus, with the background sound being "pant, pant,
pant". For 2013 the word I would choose is
"transformation." I've reached a point where the status quo does not
suit me anymore. I need change, I need to move on to the next step, a new step,
a new layer. It's time to rock things up.
See a pattern? I do, because
before I went back to read what I wrote the years before, I definitely would
have gone for “marathon” this year too. But then again, we did buy a house, do
it up and move in, all the while continuing to hold down the job and run a
family. Continuing to hold down the job seemed particularly easy this year.
Work kept rolling in, which –when you are freelance- is quite an achievement.
And having a house of our own, as nomads, has long been a dream of ours.
So for my 2013 word I am
going to with “achieve” because I achieved two dreams on my list: to own a
place to call my own, and to finally feel established in my own business.
For 2014 you ask? … I’m so
tired I want to say “sleep” but maybe I should go with something more zen. I
still want a transformation (which, although much slower than I would have
liked, it does seem to be taking place) but I’m going to go with “calm”. This
year I want to breath more, walk slower. Get places early. have more breaks
between jobs to do homework and more afternoons where we can go have hot
chocolate and discuss our lives.
You?