It goes without saying 2016 sucked for a good many people. I don’t think you can be on FB for more than 20 minutes without seeing some meme lambasting this last year. But while it was awful for all of those reasons, it was also just a hard year for me personally as well. When I picked the word “calm” for 2016, I was envisioning systems and routines and habits that kept us all from running around like crazy people.
I didn’t imagine that it would come to mean being able to grocery shop, and laugh over coffee with friends, and make dinner, and snuggle my children while simultaneously feeling bereft and grateful. I didn’t know that it was humanly possible to feel both overwhelming joy and complete brokenness at the same time, but this year…I could. I don’t know if the people nearest to me would say I’ve been “calm”, but I’ve certainly never dealt with this much emotional upheaval and maintained any level of composure before this year. Hokey or not, I’m going to go ahead and say my word certainly helped in 2016, even if it didn’t in the way I most thought it would.
So in October, when a word kept popping up (the way things prone to do when the universe or God or life is trying to tell you something), I started thinking. And listening. And when it came time to start thinking about resolutions and goals and plans for 2017 and the word came up again (and then one more time), I thought it might be time to claim it.
Discipline.
More accurately, self-discipline.
(def: noun: the ability to control one’s feelings and overcome one’s weaknesses; the ability to pursue what one thinks is right despite temptations to abandon it.)
I’m a great dreamer. I’m an okay implementor. I’m a HORRIBLE sustainer (which is one of the reasons I married a man who is a complete and total work horse. That man can put his head down and plow through with such blind determination, I get exhausted just thinking about it.) If only life could consist of picking a project, starting a goal, and two weeks later saying, “Nope. I’m going to tackle that other goal over there instead.” (and then repeating the process again and again and again). I’d win awards. I’m the absolute BEST at setting a goal.
And absolutely terrible about reaching most of them.
So…it’s time to change that and do what’s best for me, even when I don’t want to do. Even when I feel like being lazy. Even when I feel like I can break my personal rule “just this once”. Even when I’ve earned a break.
The plan is to do some small things (health, budget, home maintenance) that will hopefully (over time) make some big changes. The plan is to plow forward and hopefully through whatever 2017 throws my way. I’m going to work really hard anyway.
And I’m going to knit each of the kids a sweater. (Because it can’t ALL be about work.)
I hope you’ll tell me what you are looking forward to this year. And what your word or resolution is (if you have one of those). Thanks for being here, friends!!