Here is my annual* post about my word for 2024.
In case you missed it, my 2020 word was content, both for a year of creating content and a year of feeling intentionally content-ed while making it. My 2021 word was joined by what I called “shoulder” words at the time: intention, momentum, roll. Would one word have served me better? Did I use my words wisely? I certainly rolled with the punches that were still coming hard and fast from COVID that year.
2022 was soul-crushing and wordless. I actually remember having a word early in the year. I think it started with an “F” like flow or function. I remember the moment I said it out loud to an improv instructor and I remember the look on her face, but not the word itself. I said it with a mask on as I tried to emerge, with everyone else, only to find that COVID was still waiting–despite vaccines–and we’d all forgotten how to human talk more in not our caves.
By 2023, I was wrecked by my attempts to return to the pre-COVID world. I leaked invisible soul fluid from wounds inflicted by the improv community. My 2023 word was so secret that I didn’t even confide it to myself.
Then my dog died.
So here we are in 2024 and I have healed a little, set a few new boundaries, and once again I am seeking a word.
This year I want a weapon-word. One that I can use to swing at challenges. One that helps me parry the onslaught of tasks. One that will shield me from complications. I need my word this year to be a tool, and a tool that offers a focused way of dealing with the world. Cutting through all the bullshit (mine and the world’s) sounds good to me.
I’ve started reading The Subtle Art of Not Giving A Fuck in an attempt to simplify what I think of as “my life.” There are things in it that resonate with me despite the off-color jokes and f-bombs every few sentences. Things like:
True happiness occurs only when you find the problems you enjoy having and enjoy solving.
The Subtle Art of Not Giving A Fuck by Mark Manson
This makes a lot of sense to my brain. I love solving problems! I hate having to solve problems.
In light of how I want 2024 to evolve (and honestly, it’s been a bit of a rough start) I decided to pick a process word: How? (Yes, when I see it in my head, it has the question mark.) I know that word is going to be controversial among the word-of-the-year types because it doesn’t resonate, it doesn’t inspire. But it is small and sturdy, and I think it will help me get where I need to go.
In Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way I highlighted the following excerpt:
I have seldom conceived a delicious plan without being given the means to accomplish it. Understand that the what must come before the how. First choose what you would do. The how usually falls into place of itself.
The Artist’s Way
This has not been my experience. I absolutely have “delicious plans” about what I want to do. I regularly get snagged on the “how?“. I need steps. I need a breakdown. This year it’s the granularity, the how? that I choose to be my tool to pause, plan, and make progress in 2024.
*clearly not
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What do you think?