My guiding theme for 2018 will be Be.
It wasn’t my first choice. I had a different word in mind this autumn and I thought it was just right, but I didn’t write it down and I forgot it. Mustn’t have been as compelling as I imagined.
Yesterday, I started over by browsing through the Qs in the thesarus. I chose Q because it has a pretty shape, but so many of its words are negative. Quux was tempting; it means foobar or whatever, which fits my inability to choose and I like that it has two us in a row. But I passed on quux because it also means “yuck” and also because I should try to choose a word that offers more guidance than “whatever.”
OK, fine. Based on activities of 2017, what word might guide me to a better 2018? Secure, keep, and settle came to mind quickly but they seem too passive, too stodgy. Something more active, then. I looked at a bunch of words like change and plan and they made me feel tired. So nothing too active.
What about an emotion? Love is good, right? Peace? They didn’t resonate. Neither did joy or happiness. These words are too one dimensional.
Somehow that led me to Be: fundamental and basic to everything. Lifecoaches smugly offer it as single word advice. Be shows up in loopy script on inspirational posters. We overuse it terribly in our daily writing. Have you ever tried to avoid writing “be”? I managed it in this paragraph, but it required many rewrites.
Perhaps Be will help guide me through changes in 2018. Whatever.
Here are my guiding words and themes for previous years:
2009, no shopping: https://mt.mediatinker.com/blog/archives/010634.html
2010, connect: https://mt.mediatinker.com/blog/archives/010736.html
2011, relate: https://mt.mediatinker.com/blog/2010/12/reverb-1.html
2012, engage: https://mt.mediatinker.com/blog/2011/12/engage.html
2014, develop: https://mt.mediatinker.com/blog/2013/12/develop-2014.html
2015, explore: https://mt.mediatinker.com/blog/2014/12/explore-2015.html
2016, realise: https://mt.mediatinker.com/blog/2015/12/realise.html
The themes still seem to lag behind by two years.Though my theme for 2017 was Open, according to the lag I was likely to experience Explore instead. I certainly did explore a lot of things this year, though there were elements of Open as well. These theme words are vague like horoscopes; they can be interpreted in many ways. So let’s see if 2018 focuses on Realise. I feel like it might, as I can see some decisions coming my way and I must realise answers to them.
