Reverb13 Day 17: What’s the Word?

tyunglebower ♦ December 17, 2013 ♦ 1 Comment

What word did you select to be your travelling companion in 2013? What gifts did this word bring? What word will you choose to guide you through 2014? What do you hope it will bring into your life?

I chose no specific word as a traveling companion for 2013. Looking back, however, I could retroactively apply a few. The one that jumps out the most as I write this is, forward.

That might sound a little cliche’. Perhaps it is, though I don’t mean it simply in the, “look to the future…there’s always tomorrow” sense. I mean it in the sense of slogging on towards the destination/goal/mission through boredom, fatigue, wind, sleet and all that sort of thing. Hacking my way through the forest with an ax, one tree at a time.

Forward with writing the novels and all of those short stories. Forward with starting my own introverts social group. Forward with trying to find a better diet, and trying to exercise. Forward through disappointments and forward when I am just too weary to continue going forward. A marathon.

The gifts brought to be my 2013? In essence, productivity. Building blocks for foundations, and in some cases the foundations themselves on which to build the rest. Once in a while, it brought me satisfaction that though by worldly standards I have yet to attain great “success”, I still have not succumbed to the temptation of doing nothing for an extended period of time. I don’t just sit. Everyday I have a list of things I want or need to accomplish, and I look at it several times an hour. Forward.

What word do I choose for 2014? I could continue the army metaphors. “Forward” meaning to get into position and reach whatever hill by nightfall. Once there, I could and perhaps should take command of 2014, and the various goals I’ve begun this year by making the watch word, charge. Or, charge! By charging the various fields of battle that I slogged to get to in 2013, I will hopefully next year score key victories, building on previous successes and finishing the full structures on top of the foundations laid.

In other words, 2013 was a lot about working through circumstances, whereas 2014 should probably be about shaping the circumstances.