What's Your Word for 2013?

January 04, 2013

What's Your Word for 2013?

If you read my last two posts of 2012, you might have detected an (undercurrent?) of malaise.

I spent the last two days of 2012 reading through my journal and coming to the unhappy conclusion that many of the goals I want to accomplish in 2013 bore a close resemblance to the same ones I wanted to accomplish in 2012...how many times can I wish to lose 20 pounds?

Which led me to a rumination about how I never accomplish anything and therefore have wasted the last 50 years of my life.

I'm nuanced like that.

And then...

Luckily.

I snapped out of it.

Instead of listing a litany of goals for the coming year, I will present a simple defining theme:

FORWARD.

Yes, of course, I have specific goals that I want to accomplish, especially regarding the books that I want to publish this year:

2 children's picture books (the first one will launch in March, the second in September)
2 novels (the first will launch in June, the second in time for Christmas shopping)

And other specific goals regarding the building of my writing business.

And I will run another 5K or 10K this summer, because they are fun.

And lose 20 lb., because my body deserves it.

And add a bit more structure to my life so that I'm actually doing more of what is important to me, like reading, and writing, and walking the dogs at the off-leash dog trails, instead of sitting in front of my computer...

But most of all, I want to finish 2013 knowing that I have moved forward with my life. That I am not stuck, trying to accomplish the same things I wanted to accomplish last year, and the year before.

I will move forward into new territory.

So I've found my inspirational word.

FORWARD.

And here's my inspirational verse:

I do not consider, brethren, that I have captured and made it my own [yet]; but one thing I do [it is my one aspiration]: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead,