One Word

So here is today’s prompt:

“Prompt: One Word. Encapsulate the year 2010 in one word. Explain why you’re choosing that word. Now, imagine it’s one year from today, what would you like the word to be that captures 2011 for you?”

I’ve decided that in doing this I’m going to force myself not to overthink it, otherwise I think I would end up not actually doing this whole shebang.  That said, this is a pretty hard one for the very first prompt.  Just one! freaking! word! As you know, I can tend to go on a bit, and that seems a little bit restrictive.  And who the heck knows what word for next year?  Ah, well, I will write my way into it.

For 2010, I will say this: all of my possible words are positive.  Like, not a single negative word came to mind.  Which is a pretty radical thing to realize, given that from about 2008 to the beginning of this year my word most likely would have been negative – something like stress or grief, to name just two examples.  So realizing that I’m not carrying those things around with me anymore…. That feels pretty amazing.

As you can see, I’m procrastinating about picking one word.  It feels like such a major decision!  Silly.

So, I’d better just do it.  For 2010, I choose culmination.  This may seem like a strange choice because this year might look to you all like one of new beginnings for me.  But bear with me.  Yes, it’s true that buying my house was a new beginning, for example.  But doing so was the culmination of years in which I had to work my way out from under more than 10K in credit card debt, in which I had to finally believe that I could do something like buy a house without a partner, in which I had to learn to be a grown-up.  And I think the same is true with the new book project – that on the one hand you can view it as a new beginning but it feels in a lot of ways that I can only have a new project, a new idea, because I’ve successfully surpassed the ideas that I was trapped in before, that I’ve earned the right to think carefully and slowly about something new.  This year feels like a high point.  And what’s interesting about describing it that way is that ultimately I’m not doing anything all that great.  I’m just settled into my life, which people often talk about as a negative, but I suppose this year has been about me embracing the feeling of settledness and appreciating that as something sort of wonderful.

For 2011, I want my word to be joy.  Because here’s the thing: it’s been a really long time since I’ve felt pure, unadulterated, uncomplicated joy.  I’m not talking about happiness (which I feel all the time lately) or excitement (which I feel with relative frequency).  I’m talking about something deeper and more powerful.  For me, joy is associated with love, but it goes beyond it, too: it’s that feeling that you have when you are completely loved (and in love?) that anything is possible.  It’s that sense of total well-being that has the power to push you to do really and truly great things.  If I’m honest, I’ve probably only felt that a couple of times in my life, and it hasn’t been terribly long-lived.  So this may be a bad choice of word: it may lead to drama and feeling dissatisfied and the sort of low lows that come with high highs.  But on the other hand, I think that maybe starting off from a point of peace and accomplishment and basic happiness might mean that joy on the horizon wouldn’t come crashing down into disappointment.  Maybe it’s possible that if you come to joy from a place where you actually appreciate it that it is sustainable and isn’t something you’d just throw away or let slip away.  I don’t know.  But if they are going to make me pick a word, that’s the one that I pick.  I’m ready for the next big wonderful thing.  Or, at least, I want to be ready.