There are the people who repeatedly declare this time of year that January 1st is just an arbitrary date and that the new year means nothing (but I have heard less of that this year, maybe we were all at least somewhat glad to see 2020 gone?).
I am not one of those people.
I feel a fresh burst of energy at the start of the year, inspired to get rid of half our belongings (this never happens), make the perfect routines (ditto), and accomplish every single house project on the pending list (um...never).
Regardless of my best intentions never succeeding all the way through December, I LOVE the fresh start energy at the start of a new year. LOVE. IT. This is just helped by the simplifying of packing away Christmas and going back to our normal decor. (Although, this year, I am having a hard time packing it all away! I was really happy about my Christmas decor this year and I'm trying to figure out what I liked about it so much so I can replicate it in normal life. This will NOT include a giant dead tree inside year round.)
My "word of the year" is really more of a "word for the 1st quarter" before I get distracted by flowers growing and being social more (pending COVID and last year was an exception to almost everything) or at least spending a lot more time outside. The first quarter really is an ideal time for me to buckle down and work on some things around the house since it's generally too cold for much outside things and I'm in the middle of Christmas prep for much of November and all December.
I'm proud to say, after much thinking, that I was able to come up with my word of the year for 2020 WITHOUT checking the blog. I'm very proud of that. It was Early and I think we did that to some effects (certainly not for school drop-offs and pick-ups by December. Luke had one tardy on his 1st quarter report card, his first, and it really could have been at least a dozen possible days, depending how fast he walked to his classroom.) BUT back in the spring we tried to be early with his online school (to varying success) although we did finish ~4 days before the official end of the school year so that was something!
My early was also helped by Matt's new work schedule in March and since I started getting up with him very early, I had time to do a full workout most days before showering and getting the boys up. I very rarely did this with his old work hours so getting that 30 minutes of me time in the morning, since I was getting up early, was very satisfying. (Last year I said, and I quote: "Really, school runs can be blamed for a lot of the rushing but school isn't going anywhere"....OH JANUARY DIANA. How little did you know.)
I've really been thinking, between the multitude of other things I do in a given day, about what I want to focus on in 2021, when, hopefully, we'll be back to "normal" by the end of the year (Matt got his second vaccine shot yesterday!). 2020 had a lot of hard stuff but it wasn't nearly all bad for our little family. There are parts of this weird life that I do want to carry on with us.
So my word for 2021 is "SMALL". I spent a lot of time in 2020 focusing inward, on what we could do to improve life for the 4 of us in our house. What little nagging points we could eliminate and also house improvements we could make. But also focusing inward, trying to make sense of all the differing opinions on COVID and race in America and our extremely messy political situation. Trying to listen and figure out what I believe. But I didn't want to make inward my word because that sound rather selfish and it didn't fully convey what I hope to continue to work on in 2021.
One thing about 2020 that we want to continue is prioritizing supporting small, especially local, businesses. All of our dates in 2020 involved a local restaurant (luckily we packed in many during the warmer months so we could do a lot of eating outside!) and we're trying to stop relying on big box stores. OF COURSE I'll still be shopping at Target since we buy nearly all of our toiletries and house cleaning things there (are there local stores that sell those???) but we're really trying to do more shopping small, as budget and other constraints allow. Especially with restaurants, we don't do much fast food besides Luke's monthly Book-It so it's pretty easy to buy from local places instead.
I also want to continue to make small but meaningful improvement around our house. Packing away Christmas helps me look at our house with new eyes and see things we can improve, often for little time or expense. And I ALWAYS want our number of possessions to be smaller (Christmas decor aside, maybe books too...) and Matt even suggested a joint closet clean-out last week (not that it's a competition...but I got rid of one more thing than he did).
Small also means finding small way to make a change with the MANY issues facing our country right now. I don't know what all of those are yet or how they will happen. There are a lot of troubling things happening and it's very confusing to try to make sense of it much less know what to do to help anything. But I want to find SOMETHING to do, even if it's small things. I'll be on the lookout for those.
I have also picking back up a Bible reading habit, with the small intention of reading at least one verse a day. I am going to be happy with small progress on good habits! Small is better than none! Or good intentions for big changes that then go by the wayside pretty quickly!
So 2021, the year of making small but lasting changes. Who knows what crazy this year will bring, hopefully more normal than a new kind of crazy but who really knows anymore. I am hopefully and optimistic and ready to see what is coming.
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