Finding My Words for 2010
If you don’t know Juliana Finch you’re seriously missing out. She’s my maid of honor, big sister and favorite advice-giving, singer-songwriter on the planet. She inspired me to try and find my word for the new year to help me set my intentions for the year. I’ve been thinking for the last few days and I chose “freedom” and “routine.” I know those choices are a bit odd, possibly even contradictory but they do make sense.
Freedom
I chose to use the word freedom, because this is the first year since 2001 that I will be free to choose how I spent my time. Over the last decade, I graduated college and started teaching school. Sadly, between teaching, a second job and drama in my personal life, I never had time to myself. Ever. I missed holidays, parties, weddings and a million events because I had to work, was too tired to go or had stuff from school to work on.
I now have free time to do what I want and it’s really quite strange for me. I have time to clean my apartment, plan lessons and I have no constraints on my time. I want to spend the year embracing that other than what I need to do for teaching, I don’t “have” to do anything I don’t want to do. Yay!
Routine
I want a routine, quite desperately. I have been over-involved for the last decade, something that I didn’t realize until I started writing this blog post. My daily schedules have revolved around other people for a very long time. I think it was at its worst when I worked at a job where my boss refused to post the schedule for the next week until Friday. I’ve been constantly flying by night and unable to make any plans in advance.
For 2010, I want a daily schedule, a reliable routine where I know what to expect on a day to day basis. Not having a daily schedule has really screwed my life up and made it more complicated than it needs to be.
So, that’s my focus for 2010, freedom and routine. If you can think of more appropriate words (because I feel weird having two!) leave a comment. Also, let me know what your focus words are for 2010, how you are planning to start the next decade.
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I think, in this case, it is totally appropriate to have two! Perhaps just decide which one you really want to focus on *first*, and then once you feel like you have the hang of that one, add the other one in.
Having a routine can actually *give* you Freedom, because you will be able to clearly see where your free pockets of time are…which parts of the day are free for you to do whatever brings you joy.
I look forward to hearing how it goes this year! (My word-of-the-year post should be going up later today.)
Hey lady! Good suggestion about focusing on which one to do first – I think that I am going to be focusing on routine first, establishing good habits for the first six months, then starting to enjoy my new freedom, seeing where it takes me creatively.
I think I’m stuck between two words, as well. The first one that clicked with me was “transform/transformation” and the second is “accomplish”.
Here’s to our New Year’s (not)resolutions!
Here is to the New Year!!!
That sounds like a great start to the new year and I’m really happy to see that you’re in such a good place right now. I can just picture you as you were when you visited Kris and my hotel room, what a changed, peaceful person you seemed to be and I think this year is only going to improve upon that for you.
Best of luck with your resolutions, hon!
I am too.
It’s funny how much perspective a year can give someone. It’s looks like you’ve been having fun in Seattle too, I can’t wait to read more in your blog. Also isn’t salmon nice? It just sucks to find out that foods you once hated were really just because someone cooked it poorly.