Into Focus

This is the fourth year I’ve taken part in the “One Little Word’ Challenge popularized by writer/artist Ali Edwards. As Ali explains it, “….the idea is to choose a word….that has the potential to make an impact on your life….a single word to focus on over the course of the year.”

I always choose my word, and consequently write about it, in mid-January, once I have a feel for the New Year but still close enough to January 1^st to feel like a New Year’s ritual. But I always start looking for my word a little bit earlier. And this year, as I tried to think about it, I found that I kept thinking of the two-word phrase “rabbit holes.” As in “Don’t go down so many.”

This was problematic for many reasons. First of all, it’s two words, not one; but more importantly, it’s a negative, not a positive. The reason it stuck in my mind was not that I wanted it to guide me, as has been the case with past words I’ve chosen – “succeed”; “possible”; “walking”; “radiate” – but that I wanted to avoid it. And choosing a word as an admonition rather than a guidepost just didn’t feel to me to be in the spirit of the One Little Word exercise.

Then it occurred to me what the positive corollary was for the thing I was trying to say. “Don’t go down any rabbit holes.” Too negative. The positive version? “Focus.” Yes, that’s it. That’s my word. “Focus.”

It’s not the prettiest word: not like many others on the extensive list of words that participants in the challenge have sent to Ali Edwards. Her list brims with beautiful, alluring words like “serenity,” “balance,” “joy,” “simplicity,” “breath,” “acceptance,” “resolve,” “intent.” My word, by contrast, feels plain and ordinary.

But it’s “focus” for 2015 nonetheless, because my goal for this year is to overcome some of my distractedness. I’m distracted in tangible and obvious ways, like devoting too much time to social media and email; and I’m distracted in more elusive ways, like accepting opportunities I don’t really want and then having to follow through on them. My mission for 2015 is to pare down the distractions – stop going down the rabbit holes – and stay attentive to that which I mean to do. Focus on food when I’m cooking. Focus on my children when I’m devoting time to them. Focus on writing – and not Facebook – when I have an assignment. Focus on saying “No thanks” when I’m asked to do something I don’t want to do and don’t have to do.

In the interest of full disclosure, I’ll admit that earlier today, I couldn’t even summon the focus to make a pot of coffee without interrupting myself. I measured the grounds, thinking about how I would write about the One Little Word Challenge, and then got the notion that maybe I could find quotes about focus. In the middle of making coffee, I hurried over to my computer to Google quotes.

It was the wrong thing to do, but it just proves there’s room for improvement. A lot of room for improvement. And the Google search that took me away from making coffee affirmed for me that many finer minds than mine have pondered the question of focus, from Henry David Thoreau to Steve Jobs. All of them affirm its importance; all of them also affirm its occasional elusiveness.

So I have my work cut out for me if I want to learn to be more focused this year. But that’s the purpose of this exercise: choose a word and weave it into your daily life. Focus. Do one thing at a time. Finish what you start. Pare away the extra stuff and avoid the rabbit holes. Like The Little Engine That Could, whose sole focus was on getting up the hill, I think I can. I’ll try, anyway.

"One Little Word" challenge: Year 3

I first learned about the "one little word" challenge in 2010. The idea, as explained here, is to find one word on which to hitch your star for the upcoming year. Or, as project founder Ali Edwards explains it, “Essentially the idea is to choose a word (or let it choose you) that has the potential to make an impact on your life…a single word to focus on over the course of the year.”

That first year, I chose the adjective “possible.” Much in my life was uncertain at that point, and there were many aspects of it that had the potential to go in either more positive or more negative directions. “Possible” seemed to be an accurate assessment while also striking an optimistic note: much is possible. Anything is possible. What you hope is possible.

In 2011, I chose the verb “succeed,” which to me was significantly different from its noun form, success. I hoped to succeed in many ways in the upcoming year. I didn’t necessarily have specific end goals that would determine whether or not my efforts had earned the title of success. I wanted to hitch my star to the concept of succeeding more than to any particular end product.

This year, I chose a very different word. It came so easily to me that I’m not sure I can explain its presence. It seemed to just organically be the word I wanted for 2012. This time, the word is a gerund: “walking.”

A somewhat odd choice, I realize. Most words people choose for the one-word challenge are more inspirational in nature: joy, serenity, gratitude, strength, balance, power, hope, fortitude. “Walking” is so quotidian by contrast, and yet in the past year I’ve come to realize how important walking is to me as a way to spend my time: I walk in the woods, I walk in my neighborhood, I walk on bike paths and city streets. I walk as a means of silent reflection; I walk while listening to podcasts or music , I walk with friends as a way of socializing. I walk the dog. I walk with the kids. On holidays at my in-laws’, I walk with my sisters-in-law. I walk fast, for exercise; or I walk slowly, to relax.

So many of my best memories from 2011 involve walking. Walking with friends on the trails in the state park behind our house. Walking on a sage-lined riverside trail in Colorado. Walking to the public beach in Portland with Tim and his friends during Tim’s birthday weekend. Walking with my college roommate on Moody Beach on a magnificent sunny September afternoon.

Beyond the literal meaning, walking seems like an appropriate guidepost word for 2012 in that it’s not a year I’m starting off with a significant number of goals or plans. A lot of things in my life are going well right now; if I could have one wish, it might be for nothing to change. Walking is a good image for how I’d like the year to progress: a calm, unhurried, mindful saunter.

Walking. It’s not an ambitious word, but it’s a fundamental and maybe even primal one. It is how most of us get through our lives, literally and symbolically. At times we run, at times we crawl, at times we stumble, at times we nearly fly; but when life is most in balance, we walk. I hope to walk a lot in the upcoming year: in the woods, on beaches, in the neighborhood, with friends. I’m starting the year with a calm, measured mindset, and this is the word that I find myself reaching for. Walking: a word that matches my current state of mind and, at the same time, reflects what I hope the upcoming year embodies.

"One Little Word" challenge: Year 2

A year ago, I blogged here about the “One Little Word” project, which I learned about from writer/artist Ali Edwards’ blog. It poses the challenge of finding one word on which to hitch your star for the upcoming year. Or, as Ali explains it, “Essentially the idea is to choose a word (or let it choose you) that has the potential to make an impact on your life…a single word to focus on over the course of the year.”

I chose the word “possible,” knowing as I did so that as an adjective with which to forecast an entire year, my word ran the risk of being so neutral as to be incontrovertible. “Anything’s possible,” I told myself. “Sure, I guess that’s possible.” “Could it be possible?” I felt a little like I was copping out on the intent of the challenge by choosing such a wishy-washy word, but it still felt like the right one to me.

Being new to the “one little word” challenge, I’m not sure if I’m supposed to evaluate my word choice or not from the perspective I’ve gained one year later. In a way, my response now to the word “possible” is the same now as it was when I chose it: “Possible? I suppose so. Anything’s possible, right?”

And in the year just passed, some things were possible and happened; others that seemed possible did not come to pass. A year ago, I looked ahead with uncertainty to various aspects of my life, unsure of what outcomes were likely to lie ahead, and that seemed like the best I could do as a new year began: admit the infinite range of possibilities.

A year later, I’m feeling compelled to try the same thing again, only this time a word came to me unbidden: “succeed.” Definitely not the noun form, “success,” but the verb. And with it comes the grade-school definition of a verb: an action word. Success is an end in itself, a goal reached, a conclusion safely arrived at: but succeed, an action word, is a process.

In choosing it as my Word for 2011, I take on the responsibility of making it relevant. I may not reach every measure of success I dream of in 2011, but I will take actions throughout the next twelve months that count toward the process of succeeding. I won’t arrive at every final goal I hold in my heart, but I will require myself to demonstrate more steps than missteps, more actions than reactions, more positives than negatives, more good moods than bad moods. In this way, I’ll try to make every day an act within the process of succeeding. Not success; not that ultimate final goal. But succeed: the ongoing process of executing actions with positive outcomes.

A word for February: Patience

In this post last month, I took a close look at the one-word challenge: the exercise of coming up with a singular word as a theme for the upcoming year.

Having selected my word for the year, I wasn’t trying to come up with a word for the month, but a word keeps whispering itself to me each night when I stand outside our front door looking at the night sky and taking a last deep breath of cold winter air before locking the house up for the evening. Patience.

Patience during this long, dull, cold part of the winter. No Christmas holidays to build toward; none of the enticing hibernation of January. We’ve done our hibernating; we’re ready to get back outside, thanks. But it’s still so cold, with temperatures in the teens or twenties every day and a bitter wind blowing. The ice on our driveway is so deep and dark it looks like stone; it’s been weeks now since anything frozen melted. I wish it would go away: I’m tired of wearing three layers of outerwear for my daily run, and I’m not even enjoying the running anymore because the face mask that protects my skin from the wind hampers my deep breathing so much.

But still: patience. It’s the time of year for just waiting the winter out.

Groundhog experiences aside, another month or more of winter weather is still likely at this point. In early March, it’s reasonable to grow impatient for a thaw, for milder days. Mid-February, on the other hand, is still way too early to lose one’s winter endurance.

Besides, the days are rapidly growing longer. I drove home well after five o’clock this afternoon and the sky was still light, turning pink and purple near the horizon. Longer afternoons come well before warmer ones, but they remind us that the earth is making its journey toward summer and the sun’s presence is increasing.

There are other reasons to think “patience” right now as well. I’ll be patient with the writing assignments that are uninspiring, and I’ll wait patiently for those that need outside encouragement to find the right reader. I’ll be patient with Holly’s ongoing insistence on help getting dressed every morning, a task I so wish she would take on herself. Tim is already beginning to shed his yearly Seasonal Affective Disorder symptoms, probably because of the longer afternoons; he responded to me with unusual good cheer several times over the past few days, and it reminds me that my patience with his darker moods pays off when they lift.

I have patience, too, as I wait for our strangely behaving guinea pig, who shares my office space with me, to meet whatever fate is best for her: she’ll get over her recent lack of mobility or she’ll give up peacefully. The vet said one or the other was likely, and I should just wait it out.

Models of patience are all around me this month: my mother is following medical instructions by patiently wearing bandages to cover stitches for recent skin surgery although in her case I would have shed the bandages days ago out of self-consciousness, and my sister in DC gamely tells me the aftermath of the biggest snowstorm that area has seen in centuries really isn’t so bad, thanks to the fact they still have electricity.

So I’ll be patient with the kids as we find things to do during their school vacation week later this month, and patient with the prospect of more snow later this week, even as I wish it would all melt away. Because there must be a reason that the winter air itself is whispering a word to me. I’ll listen, and make the best use of it I can.