I’ve been choosing a word of the year since 2020. My words so far have been Create (2020), Tend (2021), and Joy (2022). The idea behind choosing a theme is to focus your attention on one area of your life you would like to change or enhance in some way. So, if someone wanted to improve their fitness they might choose the word Strength. There are many, many articles online regarding the practice of choosing a yearly theme. I was introduced to the concept through a podcast I enjoy, Happier with Gretchen Rubin.
I have spent the last couple of weeks in a period of discernment, looking back on my 2022 and imagining how I want my 2023 to look and feel.
2022 felt like a very scattered year – like I had a lot of good intentions and not enough follow through. I don’t think I sent out one birthday card to friends and family. No Christmas cards. I fell down on my correspondence with dear friends.
I’m very hard on myself, so it’s very easy to pick out the places where I fell down in 2022. I did struggle with time seeming to fly by (oops, I missed that birthday; oops I missed the best time to photograph the herons nesting; oops, I’m late in renewing the registration for my car) and with life seeming to be more something that happened to me rather than something I made happen.
Of course, many aspects of life are not ours to plan or choose. They do just happen. Catastrophic weather. Health problems large and small. Getting older. The decisions/moods/happiness of other people. Some of these things we realize we have no control over. Others we (I) somehow tend to think we can influence to a greater extent than is realistic. I know that part of the work I still need to do within myself is to be better at categorizing things into what I can control and what I cannot control.
Which brings me to my word(s) for 2023 – working on some of the things that are under my control.
In 2023 I want to make my life feel more intentional. When I think back on 2022 it’s like I was driving a car and only looking at the road directly in front of the car, not seeing the road work or the slow-down a mile ahead. I was reacting more than acting. As you can imagine, this can and did lead to a lot of unnecessary stress.
I picked four words for 2023 instead of one. My words are: FOCUS, ORDER, SERENITY, and JOY.
Focus and Order will inspire and remind me to be more strategic in my life. To plan, to record that plan, to refer to the plan often, and to carry out the plan in a calm manner. I will be using an old-fashioned paper-and-pen planner into which I will faithfully record doctor’s appointments, birthdays, oil changes, registration renewals. The one I have chosen (this one from Amazon) starts with a broad overview of the year and then drills down to the nitty gritty day to day. I’ve used paper-and-pen planners before and they have worked well for me, so I am realistically optimistic that this tool will help me this year.
Serenity, my third word, is hopefully a state of mind I will reach by keeping all of the minutiae of my life under control. It will also remind me of the Serenity Prayer, which states, “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” That wisdom to know the difference, man. That is the hard one.
I’m keeping Joy as one of my themes for this year. I loved having it as my theme last year, and I want to keep the notion of being joyful at the forefront. A dear friend of mine focused on Joy as well, and she would send me texts telling me what brought her joy on any given day (not every day, but on a regular basis). I derived so much joy just seeing what brought her joy.
Speaking of joy – today I went for a walk in the Cuyahoga National Forest with Sam and Pokey. We saw two herons, one of which was so close and so unconcerned with our presence that I was able to get some pretty nice photos. Even Pokey’s barking didn’t scare it away. Those moments of being in the presence of such beautiful creatures in such close proximity absolutely filled me with joy.
Happy New Year, everyone. My next post will be my “23 for 2023” – 23 things I plan to experience during this year.
Love,
Michelle xoxo
