What's in a word?

One of my habits, if you can call it that, is to choose a word for the year. A word that allows me to explore a theme or idea or area to focus on.

I learned that, given my tendancy to get distracted by shiny objects, New Year’s resolutions were never going to work for me. I was lucky to last two weeks into January. Then, I’d spend a lot of the year thinking about how I had failed.

Choosing my word and sharing it (importantly) allows me to choose a direction over a destination. If I find myself with a choice to make, sometimes it helps to recall the word to determine which path to explore. I also have freed myself from the annual cycle of setting the word every year (I have multi-year words) and setting the word at the start of the year. Sometimes I have multi-word years.

My current word (or one of them) is voice. Just that, no capital letter required. It has led me here, to writing these words, with help from my friend, Simon (who I shared the word with).

It’s a bit like having a value or principle to guide you. However, you don’t ‘hold yourself to it.’ It’s just a reminder, a Post-It note which comes into focus every now and then.

I suspect that I will keep hold of this word for a while yet. There’s more words to come, I am sure.