I love stringing them together in a sentence, analyzing them, then moving things around until it flows just right. The on-line Thesaurus is my best friend. I visit it several times a week, hunting for just the right word.
As you can imagine, Twitter and I have a hate/hate relationship. I can't understand why you would EVER want to limit anyone's characters to only 140? I used to try to work within these ever-constraining boundaries, but who wants to spend thirty minutes cutting out beautiful, flowy words??? I mean, where's the art in that?
My husband, on the other hand, thinks Twitter's the bomb-diggety. Short and to the point. Give me the information and let's move on, please.
Maybe that's why he was all up on creating a New Year's tradition last year that centered around picking one word. Yes. ONE word. One, tiny, small, measly word. Imagine Miss Wordy-Words angst when he announced that we must choose one--just ONE--to focus on for the whole entire year.
Oh. My. Word.
How in the world do I just choose ONE, for crying out loud?
So last year I think I may have mistaken my inability to choose just one as an inability to focus. So guess what I chose? Yes, you guessed it.
FOCUS.
Once I chose it, I second guessed myself for several days, but because of all my back and forth indecisiveness, I finally determined that FOCUS must indeed be the right one because I clearly was having a hard time focusing. Thus, I finally laid to rest whether or not it was the right word and came to peace with FOCUS. And, I have to say, I made some great strides this year regarding focusing. I can honestly say it was the right word for 2014.
Fast forward to a few short weeks ago. It's the 29th of December. It's Sunday. New Year's Day is approaching and I truly have no idea what my word is going to be for 2015. At church that morning, the preacher's sermon was entitled 'One Word' and he talked about choosing a word for the year (Eric, did you put him up to this???). He suggested jotting down some words that came to mind and start praying that God would help you narrow it down.
Okay, I thought. I'll do that.
I jotted down three or four.
I prayed. I jotted down a few more. I prayed some more.
Over the next few days it seemed that, rather than zeroing in on one word, my list just kept growing. Now I was up to ten.
We weren't allowed to tell our word until the Big Word Reveal on New Year's Day. It seemed every person in our family was walking around our house bragging about how they had their word. I had one word envy.
My daughter must have noticed my duress. She tried to help me out. She explained that she had chosen three words and prayed about each one. Her stomach kind of jumped right when she was praying about one of them, so that's the one she picked. Did I need for her to pray over my words too and let me know which one her stomach jumped on? (By the way, she has since changed her word. So much for her stomach-jumping prophecy).
I decided to go for a run. Running always gives me clarity, I thought. Surely while I'm running, I will finally zero in on ONE of my words.
My list grew to 17.
Discipline, Start, Joy, Others, Write, Uncomfortable, Serve, Love, Fight, Grit, Chillax, Breathe, Laugh, Intentional, Pray, Free, to name a few.
By New Year's Eve, I was up to 21 and counting and I was starting to feel like a Duggar. Time was running out and I was getting desperate. I started showing everyone my list, begging for their input. Both my teenagers and the counselor in our family told me they thought I should choose 'Chillax'.
'I would, but that's cheating. That's clearly TWO words.'
Well, I didn't really say that. Because WHO CARES IF IT'S TWO WORDS, FOR CRYING OUT-LOUD???!!! I LIKE WORDS!
But I didn't take their advice and choose chillax. Because I DO NOT have a problem with chillaxing.
DO NOT.
So, I guess you are wondering if I ever did finally choose my one word?
Yes.
Well, sort of.
I chose one, but then it didn't feel quite complete. It just felt a bit narrow and limiting. It needed a boost. Or two.
So, I finally changed the rules a teeny, tiny bit and decided to go with Three Words for 2015. I feel good about it. They all kind of fit together and it feels complete:
Start. Discipline. Write.
I want to start writing in 2015 and I'm going to have to be more disciplined in order for that to happen. I am also not a very good starter. I tend to procrastinate. Once I get going I'm all in, but the starting is hard for me.
So, there you go. It was a tough go getting here but it was worth the fight.
What word or words did you pick for 2015?
