Word of the Year: 2010 Edition

You can find Word of the Year posts all throughout Bloggerland, and I'm adding mine as well. I had never heard of this until a couple of years ago, when I was staring down a deployment. I chose FOCUS as my word for 2008. With all of the changes 2009 was going to bring, I chose PREPARE. I learned that some things you can prepare for, and some things will knock you on your feet no matter how much you've tried to prepare.

Last fall, I decided that my word(s) for 2010 would be FLAT SURFACES. No, that's not a joke. Flat surfaces are my mortal enemy. Sure they're great for holding your dinner plate and giving you a steady surface for writing, but they also lure you into setting things down just for a little while and then keeping those random objects trapped there forever. They drive me crazy.

Eventually, though, I decided that my word for 2010 is BETTER. What finally led me to settle on this word was reading through my blog as I was getting ready to write my Christmas letter. I used to be a good mom and a good wife and do fun things and read books, and now....not so much. I wanted to bawl. There is so much that I want to do better and so many ways I want to be better. After 2009, I'm tired of just surviving and I want to flourish. (I thought about choosing flourish as my word, but when thinking about whittling down the ironing pile and keeping on top of the litter box, it seemed a little too fancy.)

Being better at so many things may seem a little daunting, but I am not shooting for perfection, just improvement, so surely I can do that, right? Some things (cleaning, school), I have plans for, some others (reading, more sleep), I don't. But that's okay. I have twelve more months to work on them. So here's to 2010, a better year in every way!

For last year's words belong to last year's language. And next year's words await another voice. And to make an end is to make a beginning. ~ T.S. Eliot