One Little Word – 2016

This is a journey each year since Ruth Ayer’s started the one little word idea (at least it was from Ruth that I heard about it). Last year my word was listen -listen to myself and others. It might be a good word again but feel the need to push forward in my thinking.

This year I found a phrase I like but wanted to cull it down to one word. I took key parts of the phrase and looked them up in a thesaurus. Then I looked up those words again. I keyed in the phrase in google to see what hits I would get and I continued to make lists of words. There are a lot of great words in our world.

This word for me needs to speak to action but action with thought behind it like last years. This word needs to reflect my letting go, cleaning out and developing a new.

All this comes from having retired three years ago. The quiet loss of a way of being. The letting go of a life time of work but really for me a way of living. It was my way of being in the world. A Teacher – ask my children they would so agree.

The first two years I still felt connected and worked hard to be in the conversation around education. This year I am still helping at a school, I am reading children’s books as always but my center of gravity has shifted. I am thinking and cleaning out. I am weeding out what is no longer part of my new way of working. That means years of educational magazines are being recycled, teaching curriculum books are again being thinned out and given to those who might use them. I am weeding and clearing space for the new. 

I still wonder around unsure of who I am now that I am not a “teacher.” I write, I garden, I read but I realize that getting to that new place where I can say I am _________ is going to take a few years. It took a few teaching years to get to that point of saying loudly and clearly – I am a teacher! 

So 2016 will continue to be a year of exploration, learning and developing a new core. I am not claiming anything yet – I am a “teenager” still sorting through ideas –

• what can I be now?
• who am I now, really?

Last year I claimed writer and then didn’t do the writing I wanted but gardened like crazy. The year before I claimed gardener and sort of did that but did more writing.

From change comes new beginnings – so now after all this writing and sorting of words – you ask, what is the word that will take me through this year?

I began with the phrase –

• Be thoughtful, and keep weeding  (it came out of my garden reading with Margaret Roach – A way to Garden)

This went to the phrase my yoga teacher uses with me all the time

• Letting go
• Allow

To this one little word of looking forward:

                                             Developing

To develop one needs to:

•  weed out the old
•  be thoughtful
•  let go
•  explore new things – yes!

With that we are on to the new year – developing a plan for

• my garden
• my writing
• my sorting – like cleaning the closet in my office

and thinking about who I really am now!

Happy New Year!