#reverb10 :: Day 1 :: One Word

Today I stumbled across a website called #reverb10. It’s 31 days of journaling prompts to help you “reflect on this year and manifest what’s next“. I love this idea. You may have noticed the blogging around these parts has been rather light as of late. So I’m going to jump in & see if I can make it the entire 31 days. (I’ll probably post them a day behind, i.e. today December 2nd I’m posting the journaling for December 1st’s prompt.)

Here we go…

Day 1’s prompt was :
One Word. Encapsulate the year 2010 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 2011 for you?

A word for 2010 is difficult. As I think back over the year, it’s more feelings that come to mind… of letting go, of just surviving the craziness of our life right now, of saying no more, of laying low, a blur, a lessening of expectations. I’m not sure what one word would encapsulate all of that.

None of those things are bad, per se. They were necessary, they were deliberately chosen. I needed to just back away from things, get some perspective.

And so the word I’ve found that most closely hits the target is surrender: to relinquish or forego.

My life isn’t any less crazy yet, and won’t be for some time. Which is quite okay…I love the things that make our life crazy right now. Mainly it’s the kids’ activities that make it so, and there is nothing I love more right now than sitting on the sidelines, or in the bleachers, or out in the audience cheering them on. I embrace the crazy and love every minute of it, because it won’t last forever and I know I’ll miss it when it’s done.

But I’m ready to add some things back into my life again, some things for myself, some of the things I’ve relinquished and foregone. Madeline is a sophomore, and the picture of her leaving the nest is slowly coming into focus. The other 2 won’t be far behind. I feel myself already letting go of the reins a bit, letting her start to figure out her own path, slowly disentangling my own identity from hers. Wow, is that hard. But I’m thinking that in order to not end up curled up in the fetal position under my bed on her first day of college… I need to start preparing now. Slowly. Baby steps.

However, in order to add things back in I’m going to need to do some careful editing. Some things are going to have to go, or at least be simplified. I haven’t really started to figure out what those things are yet. It’s easy to say these are things I’d like to have back in my life – writing, photography, craft, gardening, music. It’s oh-so-hard to say these are the things I’m going to have to give up in order to have those other things. It might mean giving up Facebook. Oh, the shock! Me and my technology are so closely wedded. It might mean becoming an early morning person. That one’s hard to imagine, too. It might mean a major purge of our “stuff”. Less stuff to take care of would mean less time spent taking care of it. It might mean giving up the farm. That one is the hardest, for sure, and even harder when that decision isn’t one that can be made by myself.

So at first I was thinking my 2011 word should be joy. Figuring out the things that bring me joy, and making space for them in my life. But I think the word somehow needs to include the flip side, the editing out in order to make room for the things that bring me joy.

Again, not easy to find a single word to encompass all of that. But I finally settled on intent: –noun. Something that is intended; aim; purpose; design. (For some reason, it appeals to me that this word is a noun instead of a verb like surrender.)

It will be interesting to revisit this a year from now & see what’s become of it…

1 year ago:

Piglets, Iowa Food Coop, & winter deliveries