As it is the beginning of another round around the sun, I thought of spicing this round up with something to concentrate on. It looks like new year's resolutions are completely out and everybody's choosing a word for guiding the year ahead, which I'm only noticing now. I'd chosen my word in early December and heard of nobody else's words, so I had no idea I'm in there with everybody else. But I have a word to guide me too. My word is
C A L M
with big, spaced out capital letters to let it all sink in, slowly.
And the way it might manifest itself - I thought, might be that instead of me sitting still and doing nada and *being* calm, I might try to actively produce calm, to *create* it. The being calm might just happen miraculously once I've created some space for it to exist.
I'm a master of beginning things, and it's super easy for me to leave everything half done (see my previous post). So there's about a million half-done things laying around in my life, and I tackling those, in a calm manner, one by one, and with concentration and some deeply breaths, is my plan for the beginning of the year. I'm intending to *create* some calm every day, especially at work.
And this is what I've done so far:
1st of January
I was at home, and sewed some half done products for the shop that were laying around the sewing table waiting for "the right moment". It took about an hour, and now they're one step closer to becoming finished, 3/4 finished.
2nd of January
The first day of work for this year. I decided to begin the calm-creating by tackling three little drawers on my desk at the shop. I decluttered them and left only the direly needed stuff there, so they're easy to find when I need them. I also found there are business cards that are sort of half done (I scrapbook them from card stock and printed recycled paper), and some elastics and satin ribbons for the ballet pointe shoes that need packaging and restocking. I had none left in the shop although I have all the materials for them, so they clearly needed some crafting.
So as well as cleaning the drawers, I finished the elastics, made some 20 packages of them for the shop, and sorted out their pricing and the restocking options from the manufacturer.
3rd of January
The second day at work meant more finishing business. I packaged the pointe shoe satin ribbons, and finished one roll of ribbon completely from the storage shelves, making sure I have a reminder in my calendar to order another roll with the back to school -orders in March. This is how many there are now - they should last us until next autumn. Oh, and the packaging is from an old book that I salvaged from the local University Library. It's an early edition of the three musketeers. SO much fun to read as I chop the pages :)
4th of January
This was the day of packing at the shop (were taking the shop to another town for a day), so I didn't have as much time for the finishing business as I had in the previous days, but I did finish most of the business cards I had half done. Now there's plenty again, and my little watering can looks so cute with the cards in :)
Although there's still a few business cards let to finish next week when I get back to work, the three drawers are looking pretty calm already. This is the bottom one of them:
So the year is off to a good start.
What's your word - and how have you manifested it in the first few days of the year?
6 comments:
love it! I've been choosing a word each year for five years now. This year my word is HABIT of course but other years were SIMPLE, FOCUS, LIGHT, and MORE. Are you familiar with Ali Edwards' blog? she has been doing this quite a while and has a great round up of words for this year:
http://aliedwards.com/2014/01/one-little-word℠-2014-the-list-the-reading-of-the-words.html
Crystal - I could have guessed your word :) It's a good one! I thought this creating calm could be somehow related to your project - although it might not manifest itself as a creative habit, it's still worth not letting the good calm-creating chain break!
I hadn't come across Ali Edwards before, the word idea came to me from doing a 2013 review from Susannah Conway's blog. But I'll have to dig in to Ali's blog, definitely :)
I've been hesitant to share my word, but here goes: SANITY. Mid 2013 brought on a high point with my generalized anxiety disorder, and I'm still learning how to manage it. So, everything I do in 2014 will be prefaced with: does this support my sanity/mental health. I am so grateful that my job is a major component of my feeling calm and secure.
That's one perfect and fitting and important word there, thanks for sharing it. Mental health is something that one doesn't so easily take into account, until something happens to it. I believe sanity could have been my word, too, for this calming stuff is pretty much just that - creating space for my mind to be less hectic, so that it won't react too harshly to the outside forces. It's a good and a well needed word (I believe for all of us), congratulations!
My word for this year is grit. I want to foster that quality in myself and my students.
Wow, Beverly. That's a big word. Have you checked what Wikipedia has to say about grit?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grit_(personality_trait)
I'd love to have some more of it in my life, definitely. Good choice!
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