Words, Words, Words about Words of the Year

If you're new to the Word of the Year concept and want more information, please read this post and this post. Then come back to here and join the fun for 2012!



I've been ruminating on a word for 2012, and I've found it, thanks to my friend Betsy.

My word for 2011 was Learn. Since it's impossible for me not to learn, I feel quite successful and hope the rest of you who chose words last year feel successful, too. Remember, it doesn't matter if you did a lot with your word or just a little. If your word made you act or feel or think at all, you succeeded. There are no grades here, no pass/fail, as with more typical New Year's resolutions.

Words of the Year inspire.

If you want to be inspired by a word this year, choose carefully and post it in the comments here. There's no deadline, and I'll remind you periodically to choose a word and to put it into action. How you act is entirely up to you and your word. With Learn, I read and researched topics that interested me, listened to NPR, and subscribed to some new magazines...all things I would have done anyway, but my word made me more conscious of how much I learn and how good it makes me feel.

This year, my word is Gratitude.  Like Learn, Gratitude is a natural choice for me. I spend a lot of my time in prayer expressing gratitude to God and a lot of time writing about gratitude for this blog. In the past few weeks, I've bumped into discussions of gratitude with freakish frequency, and this morning I opened an email from my friend Betsy with a link to this video, and suddenly, I had my word for 2012.

I will be inspired by Gratitude.

What word will inspire you this year?

Word of the Year Update

Some of you, like me, chose a word to be your inspiration this year, a mantra or focus for your attention. This morning, I had to look my word up. I forgot what it was. When I discovered my word was Learn, I thought, "Oh, good. You're doing that every day!" See how smart it was for me to choose a word that is a part of my life each and every day anyway? Guaranteed success!

Here's the list of people who shared their words this year:

Me: Learn

George: Relax

Mom: Practice

Starla: Leap

Sue B.: Celebrate

Francie: Appreciate

Sue: Satisfied

Susan K.: Bigger

Lisa: Free

Linda R.: Enjoy

Claire L.: Delegate

Mickey: Acceptance

Cheryl L.: Create

Karen L.: Reflection

Marilyn: Believe

Amy: Positive

iriseyes: Act, Kind

Mari: Expand

Susan: White Space

Angela L.: Nature

Courtney L.: Write

Ginny: Focus

Nicole: Unrepentant

Janet: Trim

Kathy: Redefine


So, what have I learned this year?

I've learned that magazines are like bacteria: they multiply exponentially if you let them. Last week, I gathered up all the unread and half-read magazines and put them in one stack. I've been plowing through them ever since, learning all sorts of cool things about black holes and the human brain. As I dove into the Scientific American Mind and  Discover issues, I realized anew how little we really know about the universe and the human mind and pretty much everything else. So much of what humans thought they knew 100 years ago in science has been found lacking or outright wrong, which leads me to wonder how much of what we think we know now will stand the test of time. Not much, is my guess.

I've learned that even though dogs take forever to heal from patella surgery, they don't whine or complain. In fact, they pretty much ignore their injury and try to have as much fun as possible. There's a life lesson in that, if only I can remember it when I feel like whining and complaining.

Stephen Ministry continues to fuel my learning. Our current study is on spiritual gifts. I've learned what my spiritual gifts are and the next step is to figure out how we can develop our current gifts more fully and deploy them in the world. Good stuff.

I've learned to buy my boys' back-to-school supplies in July. The day we went to Target to get everything, I left the lists at home and berated myself as I stood there in the middle of the boxes, bins, and shelves of supplies. Suddenly, I remembered that the lists are posted on the school district website and that I had the technology to access the website right there in Target! I pulled out my Blackberry, Googled the lists, and did the shopping. Needless to say, I'm learning to love my smart phone!

I've learned that bodies need to move. Mine hasn't moved enough in the past few years, and I'm fixing that. It feels good to move again.

Now it is your turn. How is your Word-of-the-Year project going?

Word of the Year Quarterly Check-In

Remember the Word of the Year Project? Many of you claimed a word for 2011 to be your guiding theme of the year. My word is Learn. If you need a reminder, here's our list of words:

Me: Learn

George: Relax

Mom: Practice

Starla: Leap

Sue B.: Celebrate

Francie: Appreciate

Sue: Satisfied

Susan K.: Bigger

Lisa: Free

Linda R.: Enjoy

Claire L.: Delegate

Mickey: Acceptance

Cheryl L.: Create

Karen L.: Reflection

Marilyn: Believe

Amy: Positive

iriseyes: Act, Kind

Mari: Expand

Susan: White Space

Angela L.: Nature

Courtney L.: Write

Ginny: Focus

Nicole: Unrepentant

Janet: Trim

Kathy: Redefine


So now that the first quarter of 2011 is over, I thought we should have a little check-in to see how we're doing.

For me, this year's word is a no-brainer. Learning is like breathing...I want to do it all the time; in fact, I couldn't stop myself if I tried. Here are some of the things I've learned in the last three month:

1. Jeans grow as you wear them. Just because you put on jeans the second day in a row and they are baggy doesn't mean you have magically lost weight overnight. Sad, isn't it?

2. Tricare supplemental insurance isn't worth the cost for our family at this time.

3. I'm a daydreamer and write novels in my head. Well, since the onset of Mommy ADD eleven years ago, I write short stories in my head. When I was in college, I learned that up to half (and perhaps more) of all students sitting in a college class are not listening at all...they are daydreaming about sex. Still, I've always suspected that most adults in the real world were more sensible and didn't daydream much about sex or anything else, but it turns out I was completely wrong. According to an article in Scientific American Mind magazine, "daydreaming can help solve problems, trigger creativity, and inspire great works of art and science.... Most people spend about 30 percent of their waking hours spacing out, drifting off, lost in thought, woolgathering--or as one scientist put it, 'watching your own mental videos.'"

What a relief to learn I'm normal after all. Now, if only I could get those short stories and novels out of my head and onto paper....

4. I've learned a lot about dogs. For instance, if a dog eats a smallish rock, you should feed it whole wheat bread and wait for the rock to pass. If a dog eats a dish towel, you should take it to the vet, who will make it throw up. Then, the vet, who owns two golden retrievers of his own, will confess to you that he refers to the breed as golden retardeds. And you will agree with him.

5. Also, I learned a dog can dislocate its knee cap, which is as painful as it sounds. Puppies who have never experienced pain before will dramatically cry the first time they get hurt. Then, as they get hurt more (as in repeatedly dislocating their knee cap), they will stop crying and man up. Or dog up, as it were.

6. A small boy who hates getting shots, however, will not man up with repeated experiences at the immunization clinic. In fact, each time you take him back to the torture chamber clinic, it will take one more adult to hold him down than the previous time. We're up to four grown-ups to hold down a 65-lb boy.

7. Reconnecting with old friends on Facebook is fun and rewarding most of the time, but occasionally, it's best to let the past lie quietly behind you.

8. My minimalist closet works as planned. Now, if I could only learn how to apply the concept to my craft room....

NEVER!

9. I learned I can roast a chicken that's as good as George's roasted chicken. I'm not sure this is a good thing to have learned, however, as it makes me more likely to have to cook in the future. 

10. After 2.5 years of seriously studying the Bible, I finally learned how to find the book of Isaiah in less than ten seconds. Go, me! Now, if only I could figure out where Tobit is....

Now, it is your turn. What have you done with your word so far? Please share in the comments!

Happiness

Over the weekend, I read a blog post by V-grrrl that struck a harmonious chord with my recent reflections on the Word of the Year project. At the end of the post, she writes, “Maybe we need to respect, not despise, the unfinished business in our lives and see it not as a failure, but as evidence of a life fully lived and explored. In the process of running in circles, we are also covering a lot of ground!”

I like this. As someone whose hyperactive brain is always hatching far too many grand schemes for a single human to accomplish in one lifetime, I like the idea of shifting perspective so we see our unfinished business as proof of richness and the limitless possibilities of life, and not evidence of insanity or inadequacy. Truly, the world is such a fascinating place how can people not want to explore subjects as diverse as Roman aqua ducts, the symbolism of sacraments in medieval romance poetry, and string theory?

V-grrrl's comment is directly relevant to our Word of the Year project. Part of my perceived failure the past two years has been a belief that I need to accomplish my word, like it's a goal rather than a guideline.

Then, last night, I read Chapter 5 of Gretchen Rubin’s book The Happiness Project. The Happiness Project, in case you didn’t know, documents Rubin’s year-long attempt to find practical ways to apply the latest happiness research to her life.

Will wonders never cease? There’s happiness research. The psychological community finally realized that it needed to study happiness just as seriously as it has studied neuroses, psychoses, anger, fear, and other negative stuff. Perhaps by studying happiness, we might better understand how to get over, under, or through the bad stuff of life.

But it’s hard to take happiness research seriously. I mean, how do you quantify happiness? Can it be charted and graphed and referenced with jargon? Sure.

But it takes all the happiness out of it.

Rubin’s book, however, shows how the research can be played with in our lives to make them happier. And Chapter 5 is all about how Rubin tried to have more fun because having fun is a part of happiness. (Research was done to figure that out.) In thinking about what Rubin finds fun, she explores how she enjoys children’s literature a bit more than literature for adults. She writes,

“But my passion for kidlit didn’t fit with my ideas of what I wished I were like; it wasn’t grown up enough. I wanted to be interested in serious literature, constitutional law, the economy, art, and other adult subjects. And I am interested in those topics, but somehow I felt embarrassed by my love of J. R. R. Tolkien, E. L. Konigsberg, and Elizabeth Enright.”

While I’ve never hidden my love of Tolkien or the Harry Potter series, I strongly relate to Rubin’s desire to be grown up enough in her reading. A year ago, I bought Proust’s Swann’s Way, the first book in his magnum opus, Remembrance of Things Past. I’d always thought my ignorance of Proust was a gaping hole in my literary education, and after reading the fascinating book Proust was a Neuroscientist, I felt compelled to fill that hole. A year after purchase, however, Swann’s Way rests unopened on the bookshelf by my bed. I've read a LOT in the last year, but somehow, Swann's Way never made it off the shelf and onto my bedside table.

So does the shelved state of Swann’s Way constitute failure on my part or does it simply provide evidence of the richness of my interests in books? I suppose the answer depends on what I do with that unopened book. Right now, it represents potential knowledge. Will I learn something interesting? Will reading it be fun? I don’t know. Not until I crack it open and give it a try, which I suppose I'll do sometime this year in my pursuit of my Word of the Year: Learn.

Last week, I took Ovid’s Metamorphoses to my bedside table and have started reading it as the beginning of my Learn journey. If you are wondering why in the heck I'm reading a really long poem written by an ancient Roman poet, you've clearly forgotten that I am a geek...and not just any geek, but a geek completely obsessed with all things medieval. Metamorphoses had a huge influence on medieval literature, and while I'm familiar with a lot of the mythological stories it tells (thanks to my fifth- and sixth-grade obsession with Greek and Roman mythology), I've only read around in it, not all the way through it. Given that part of what I want to Learn this year is new stuff about the Middle Ages, Ovid's seminal work (pun intended) seemed a good place to start.

At first, though, it felt like a chore, and I wondered why I was doing this to myself. Was this really a fun thing to learn? But now that I'm into Book II, Ovid has pulled me in to the world of lust and deception and infidelity and hubris and revenge and weird transformations of beautiful young girls into laurel trees and giant bovines. I'm not, however, feeling more grown up reading it. In fact, I'm feeling very much like a dirty-minded teenager thumbing through romance novels for the dirty parts. Only in this book, pretty much the whole thing is dirty.

And dang, that is fun!

Proust, however, may not have the same adolescent appeal. Perhaps there will be a different appeal to reading Swann's Way, something equally fun but more grown up. If there isn't, I'm not going to waste my Word of the Year on it. Life's too short to read unappealing books when you don't have to, even if they are brilliant works of literature and you feel like you're supposed to like them.

To wrap up all this rambling, let me say that V-grrrl, Gretchen Rubin, and Ovid have helped me shift my thinking about the Word of the Year project to a happier, healthier, less serious perspective. I don't have to Learn grown-up stuff unless it's fun. There's lots of stuff that's not grown up at all that I don't know, and it's okay to pursue learning that stuff, too. There's not time for learning everything in my life, so I'm going to focus on what's interesting to me, FUN to me, and let the rest go.

I'd love to hear about whatever is helping you get going with your Word for 2011. Please share!

Words, Words, Words for the Year

"The Old Year has gone. Let the dead past bury its own dead. The New Year has taken possession of the clock of time. All hail the duties and possibilities of the coming twelve months!" Edward Payson Powell

"Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right." Oprah Winfrey

------------------------------
Here are the words I have so far. Let me know if you want to add your word to this list!

Me: Learn

George: Relax

Mom: Practice

Starla: Leap

Sue B.: Celebrate

Francie: Appreciate

Sue: Satisfied

Susan K.: Bigger

Lisa: Free

Linda R.: Enjoy

Claire L.: Delegate

Mickey: Acceptance

Cheryl L.: Create

Karen L.: Reflection

Marilyn: Believe

Amy: Positive

iriseyes: Act, Kind

Mari: Expand

Susan: White Space

Angela L.: Nature

Courtney L.: Write

Ginny: Focus

Nicole: Unrepentant

Janet: Trim

Kathy: Redefine
 
 
Now, the next step is to decide how to implement your word. Sue B has already started to celebrate by soliciting birthday cards for her husband, who will turn 90 in February. If you would like to contribute to her celebration effort, please let me know!
 
Please share your word (if you haven't already) and how you plan on getting started with it for 2011.

Word

If you’ve been reading Questioning for the past two years, you know I have made attempts at having a Word of the Year.

The first year’s word was Simplify.

Let’s just say that sometime in July of 2009, I gave up on Simplify; accepted the crazy complexity of life, the universe and everything; and embraced the word Chaos.

Whatever.

Last year’s word was Write.

Sure, I wrote—just not what I had planned to write. This should have left me feeling like a failure but didn’t, though I am at a complete loss to explain my extreme ambivalence about that.

Given my lack of success with the whole Word of the Year idea, you might be surprised to read that I’m taking another stab at it. This year’s word, however, was carefully chosen to guarantee success. I thought hard about what I do basically all the time with very little effort. Breathe came to mind. Breathing is good. I could breathe all year and feel quite successful.

Then, I berated myself for being an underachiever. I mean, seriously, we breathe in our sleep. Not much of a goal in that, now, is there?

Finally, I settled on Learn.

As you know, I'm an unapologetic geek and therefore addicted to learning anyway, so motivation is not a problem here. Please note that I have not said exactly what I will learn. I don’t know. That’s sort of the point, actually. It's the serendipity of the whole exercise: you never know what you'll learn on any given day.

For instance, a few weeks ago, I watched an utterly fascinating show about ancient Roman engineering. I learned a lot about how amazing the Romans were at building stuff (aqua ducts, the Coliseum, domes) and watched modern engineers try to duplicate their methods. It was the best two hours of television I’ve watched in a long time, and I just stumbled across it while channel surfing.

A couple night's ago, Mom, George, and I were watching television, and we all three learned that eels have a second jaw that shoots forward from behind their front jaw and pulls food into their throats. That's how an idiot diver lost his thumb while feeding an eel.

I'm not sure what I'll do with this nugget of knowledge because I would never be caught allowing an eel to grab my thumb in the first place, but learning isn't necessarily supposed to be practical. It's just supposed to be cool.

And easy, too, because there is so very much in this world that I don't know. I can't help but bump into new stuff to learn pretty much every single day. So that’s what I plan on doing.

Now it’s your turn. If you had a word for 2010, what was it and were you true to it? What will be your Word for 2011? Please share. As you let me know, I’ll update the list below.

2011 Words
Me: Learn
George: Relax
Mom: Practice
Starla: Leap
Sue B.: Celebrate
Francie: Appreciate
Sue: Satisfied
Susan K.: Bigger
Lisa: Free

NOTE: The complete list of words is on THIS POST.

Things I Learned in 2010

In no particular order, here are some things I learned (or relearned) in 2010.

One thing people can do after they lose a loved one is open their hearts to love someone new. Ask my mom, whose baby grandson was born six months after her own mother died, and ask our family, who welcomed Daisy into our home three weeks after Hoover died. The pain of loss doesn’t go away, and someone new doesn’t replace someone gone at all, but someone new helps the heart grow new love. And that’s a good thing.

When someone unsubscribes from one of my blogs, it’s nothing personal. At least, that's what I tell myself.

There are definitely more nice people in the world than mean people, though I admit some mean people can definitely screw it up for the rest of us. I’d started to doubt the general goodness of humanity while listening to regular news outlets and their sensational stories of greed, corruption, political bad boys, economic misery, and death and destruction. As an antidote to all the negativity, I made http://www.happynews.com/ my home page on my computer. I started getting a daily dose of, well, happy news. Stories of goodness, mercy, compassion, and love are everywhere in this world…if you look and listen in the right places. Ignoring the bad in the world is rather stupid, but if you fill your mind and heart with only knowledge of the bad, you lose perspective, which is a terribly important thing to have.

Rescuing wildlife makes you feel good. Releasing that rescued wildlife back into the wild after it has recovered makes you feel giddy and causes you to erupt in giggle fits for days after.

The whole Word for the Year thing is not working for me. I’m sad about this because it’s such a wonderful idea. My word for 2010 was Write, and while I did write quite a lot here and on Simplicity, I didn’t work on my book or start freelancing, which were the goals of the word in the first place. Also, my autism blog is suffering sadly from neglect. Oddly, I look back over 2010 with joy and pleasure despite this failure because I did a lot that I’m proud of. I took care of two boys, a man, and two dogs. I blogged over 233 posts on Questioning my Intelligence and over 427 posts on Simplicity. I created hundreds of cards and pushed my creative self harder than ever before. I read dozens of books. I learned and laughed and lived and drank coffee and ate chocolate. I ironed George’s shirts, made his lunches, and was his Iron Sherpa at Ironman Wisconsin. I received countless little kindnesses…even from total strangers from the Land of Internet. I cooked several meals and coordinated meals for dozens of people in our church. I finished another year-long Bible study. I spoke in church and didn’t die from fear. I mourned one very good dog and welcomed another into our home. I helped release a wild animal back into nature where he belonged. I sent a lot of cards this year, including hundreds to the troops for their use, and hopefully, each card brightened its recipient’s day.

I once heard that to be happy, every day you need to do something for someone else, something for your mind, something for your body, something for your soul, something creative, and something you don’t want to do which needs to be done. After this year, I would add that you also need to look at everything that happens to you and everything you do through a prism of love. I used to think the best prayer ever was “This, too, shall pass.” It’s pretty useful, isn’t it? Now, however, I think the best prayer ever is “Lord, make me a blessing to someone today.” Maintaining this loving perspective on life twenty-four/seven is pretty much impossible (at least for me and probably for any other mostly normal human being), but it’s amazing how transformative it can be. At least, it makes ironing shirts much more pleasant, which can only be a good thing.

When you have an impulse to do something nice, don’t over-think it and wimp out. Just do it.

For the past 11 years, since I became a stay-at-home mother, I’d felt my life made very poor copy in our annual Christmas letter. The day-to-day of caring for two boys just isn’t that interesting; you can only say so much about diapers and potty training and gymnastics lessons and school. For the past two-and-a-half years, I’ve written that mundane life into this blog, making it funny (I hope) and universal, and showing just how meaningful and important it is. This year, my children reached ages that require less daily dependence on me, and so I branched out and started some new things, such as the Mark’s Finest Papers Design Team (for creative development) and Stephen Ministry training (for spiritual and interpersonal development). To varying degrees, both adventures have been life-changing in wonderful ways. Who knows what 2011 will hold, but it’s bound to be interesting!

Next week, I'll post a new Word of the Year. I think. At least I'll give all of you who have more success with your words a chance to share your word and commit to it for 2011. Have a very safe and happy new year's celebration!

A Word for 2010

Last year’s word was Fearless, and in many ways, it worked for me, especially in the area of stamping. If you’re at all curious about that or want to know how a word can change your life, you can read all about Fearless here.

My word for 2010 is Write. As in,

*Write my book.

*Write notes in cards and mail them to family and friends.

*Write my blogs.

*Write on scrapbook pages.

*Write because I want to write, because it’s fun, because I feel compelled to write from inside myself and not because I have to please somebody else.

What is your word for the year? If you need ideas, check out Ali Edward's post here. Once you choose a word, please share it in the comments because you just never know when your word might resonate with someone else and help them bring focus to 2010. I'll compile a list of everyone's words and post it next week.

Happy choosing!

Resolute

New Year’s Resolutions are such odd things. We feel compelled to make promises to ourselves that we pretty much know we won’t keep, but every year, come January 1st, we have the best intentions. We hope for change in ourselves but rarely manage it. Sometimes, though, we do succeed, even spectacularly. I wonder what makes the difference between the successful resolution and the more common unsuccessful one.

Eighteen months ago, I decided to quit drinking Coca-Cola. My husband had heard this particular resolution before and rolled his eyes at me when I declared my intention. This time, I stuck to it. I haven’t had a coke in all this time, despite my continued mouth-watering Pavlovian response to the sound of a can of soda being opened anywhere around me. Or even on television. Or even just when I imagine the sound in my brain.

But if someone popped a cold one in front of me right now, despite my salivating response, I would just say no.

I wish I knew why I’ve stuck with this one. My reasoning included such logical self-talk as

a) soda weakens your bones and you don’t want to develop osteoporosis like your grandmother,
b) you’re gaining weight and soda is empty calories,
c) soda rots your teeth,
d) you’ve got stomach acid issues and pouring five cans of acid down your throat every day is sort of stupid.

The only thing my emotions were telling me was that the sugary, bubbly, caramelly soda made me happy. I wasn’t scared of osteoporosis (too far in the future) or stomach acid (pop antacid tablets after each can) or tooth rot (I rarely get cavities). I didn’t like the weight gain, exactly, but I still wasn’t fat. I’d been telling myself all those logical reasons to quit for years. For some reason, my brain’s logic circuits finally won.

When I thought about this year’s resolutions, I came up with several:

1) Write more.
2) Exercise more.
3) Scrapbook more.
4) Eat less and better.

I thought I was doing a good thing by being rather vague. Wouldn’t those goals be easier to achieve? Alas, no. Reading an article in Parade Magazine Sunday morning, I learned that resolutions should be specific and realistic, and must engage both logic and emotion. You should also adapt your environment to promote success. This advice is based on the latest and greatest brain research by distinguished neuroscientists, psychologists, and medical doctors. Who am I to argue with smart people like them?

My 2010 resolutions meet only one of the experts’ criteria: the goals are all realistic. I can write more, exercise more, scrap more, and eat less. All definitely do-able. But how, exactly, am I going to do them? How can I make the goals specific? How can I modify my environment to ensure success?

Trying to answer these questions made my brain hurt. I just deleted six paragraphs of blather about making these goals more specific.

You’re welcome.

Instead, I’m going to do what everyone else does: make resolutions, try my best to achieve them, and surely fail at most of them. But if I can quit drinking coke, I think I can at least make some progress.

Care to share your own resolutions? I’d love to read your hopes for change in 2010. Also, if you’re interested in the Word of the Year project, think about what word you would like to be your theme for 2010. (If you have no idea what the Word of the Year project is, click HERE.) You might think my word is RESOLUTE, and perhaps it should be. But it’s not. You’ll just have to wait for the anti-climactic announcement later this week. I think only my friend Karen D will understand it, anyway.

Fearless

Note: If you don’t know about the Word of the Year Project, check the links at the top of the sidebar.

My word for 2009 is Fearless, and so far it is working for me. I’m writing more—though not as much as I would have hoped—so I need to focus on increasing my output, especially for my book on autism. The best success of my Fearless project has been the launch of my stamping blog, an enterprise that scared the heck out of me because I truly feel my cards are okay but not exactly special enough to support a blog.

My attitude toward crafting is shockingly democratic. I believe that crafts, in contrast to fine arts, give us ordinary folks who lack artistic genius the opportunity to express ourselves creatively. What we make can be as kitschy as a crocheted toilet paper cover or as gorgeous as a perfectly turned piece of pottery. It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that we feel a sense of satisfaction in the act of creating, like a kindergartner who makes an Easter bunny out of a paper plate and cotton balls. That elemental creative pleasure is all a crafter needs to make the time and effort spent entirely worthwhile.

Over the past few years, my hobby of choice—rubber stamping—has grown in popularity, and like other hobbies that become popular, it has become increasingly trendy, complicated, and professionalized. What was once a fun and accessible hobby that “anyone can do” has developed into an intimidating activity that seems to require actual talent as well as extensive knowledge of a huge variety of products.

I frequent an online stamping community called Splitcoaststampers, or SCS for short. The gallery at SCS contains hundreds of thousands of handmade cards to inspire and motivate other stampers. The stamp-related forums are friendly places where perfect strangers will take time to help you figure out how to pierce a straight line of dots or choose the best ink for clear stamps.

The trend toward more embellished cards came to my attention gradually through the Favorites of the Week thread, started every Sunday morning in SCS’s general stamping forum. Anyone can post links to their favorite cards for the week. When I first started looking at this thread several years ago, the styles of favorite cards were quite diverse, with everything from very simple to very ornate represented.

Gradually, however, as the embellished style became more popular and product choices expanded, fewer simple cards were posted. Seeing as I have precious little artistic talent, my forays into the gallery at SCS in general and into the Favorites thread in particular became increasingly intimidating. All those beautiful cards with ten layers of cardstock embossed and distressed and embellished into little works of art are beautiful, no doubt about it, and I admire the talent and time put into creating them. My personal style, however, is cleaner, simpler. If I were a graphic design artist, I’d want to design print ads for the Gap. Anything with lots of restful, empty space attracts my attention.

I had quit visiting the Favorites thread until January, when I decided to see what styles were getting posted. Trends change, after all, and I knew the pendulum would swing back to cleaner, simpler cards eventually.

The pendulum hasn’t swung back yet. I clicked on about 40 cards and every one was like the first: eight or more layers of cardstock, multiple embellishments, time-consuming techniques, embossing, outline stamp images artistically colored with Copic markers, and so on. Every single one was stunningly beautiful. By the time I reached the end of the thread, I felt like a total loser: that kid in junior high who suddenly realizes her project for the science fair looks like it was made by a five year old, while all her classmates’ projects look like graduate students made them. I felt embarrassed I’d ever posted a card at all, much less over 300 of them. I wanted to delete my whole gallery and slink into oblivion.

Those of you who know me personally know that I do not have low self-esteem. Years ago, I overcame my tendency to beat myself up for not being perfect. Yet there I sat, staring glumly at my computer, feeling totally beaten up and humiliated because my cards didn’t look like the cool kids’ cards.

This is what happens when you compare yourself to other people, and forget who you are and why you’re doing something. The results of such comparisons are never, ever good.

Then I remembered Julie Ebersole. Julie makes “clean and simple” into high art. When I’m thumbing through a stamping magazine, I can pick out her cards without looking at the credits. I want to be her when I grow up. I thought about Krystie Lee Hersch, who credits Julie as her major source of inspiration and makes gorgeous cards I adore, often with a single piece of cardstock and some ink. I thought about Nichole Heady, whose success with clean and simple designs led her to start up one of my favorite stamp companies, the enormously successful Papertrey Ink.

These women taught me a valuable lesson: celebrate who you are, and create what you love. I love clean and simple cards, and there’s nothing wrong with that, even if it’s not exactly trendy at the moment. These positive thoughts began to ease my humiliation, and it occurred to me that if I, with my, um, comfortable self-esteem, could feel intimidated and humiliated, there must be others who felt the same way…or worse. I brainstormed ways to celebrate the clean and simple style. The most obvious and easiest thing to do was to start a thread at SCS titled “Post your Clean and Simple Cards Here,” and here’s what I wrote:

“Okay, just checked out the favorites of the week thread and my ego has been battered to a pulp. Ouch! I've stayed away from that thread for months and months for just this reason. Those Totally Awesome Stampers ROCK!

”But for those of us who don't do techniques that require anything like ‘talent’ or ‘skill,’ who don't layer our cards into inch-thick confections of pure gorgeousness, who don't have all the latest nesties or copics, who don't have coloring skills above kindergarten level, and who do love to make clean and simple and, most of all, EASY cards...please post your favorites from your own gallery, the ones that make you happy as long as you don't compare them to what the Totally Awesome Stampers are making…. Rather than feel sorry for our simple, easy, and basic cards, let's celebrate them...because they really do deserve to be celebrated!”

Putting my neuroses out there for the whole world to see made me nervous, but something amazing happened. People admitted to feeling the same way I did. Many said they had always felt too intimidated to start a gallery themselves, but after seeing all the clean and simple cards linked to that thread, they felt energized and eager to share their work. Some people even sent me private messages thanking me for being so courageous in standing up for clean and simple stamping.

Courageous? Me? Huh? I hadn’t thought of it like that, and I guess from a certain point of view it was rather fearless of me to buck a trend. The truth, however, is that talented clean-and-simple stampers like Julie, Krystie, and Nichole have been bucking the trend all along, fearlessly doing what they love. They are the leaders, and I’m just a devoted follower who knows how to make a little noise.

You just never know what the consequences of your actions might be. Because several people suggested it might be a good idea, I started a regular Clean and Simple Favorites of the Week thread, which has turned out to be quite popular. Then, a wonderful stamper named Jen started the Clean and Simple Weekly Challenge on SCS. I’m on the first Design Team for it and post a card each week to inspire others in the challenge.

You have no idea how truly strange this feels to me…being an inspiration to others. Heck, I just wanted to feel better about my creative vision, and now lots of other people feel better about their vision, too. I’m giddy with joy over this beautiful example of my karma working for good in the universe. Too often, karma is biting me on the butt.

During this clean and simple love-fest, lots of people (well, more than five, but I’m easily influenced on things like this) asked me to start a stamping blog. I’m a first-born pleaser, so of course I had to do it. Simplicity by LateBlossom is the result. I still don’t feel that my cards are “blog worthy,” but you know what? It doesn’t matter whether they are or aren’t worthy. What matters is that I’m having fun posting them and at least a few people are having fun seeing them.

Best of all, the gallery at SCS now has many more clean-and-simple cards posted every day. Those cards inspire me and put a very silly grin on my face every time I visit the gallery now. Long live Clean and Simple!

So far, living my word Fearless hasn’t gotten me published, but I’ve made new stamping friends and once again feel like a kindergartner with an amazing work of paper-plate-and-cotton-ball art to show my mommy. Knowing that I helped others feel the same elemental joy of creating something beautiful for themselves motivates me to create more, stamp more, share more. If there’s a downside to this situation, I’ll be darned if I can find it.

Now it’s time for me to get to work “creating” that book about autism. I feel pretty Fearless about that.

So please do tell, how’s your word working for you?

Word of the Year Update

I’ve heard from a number of you regarding the Word of the Year Project. Some of you posted comments on the first Word essay HERE; others emailed me privately. Some have told me you are thinking about a word. Take your time. It’s all good. As more of you jump onboard our merry little bandwagon, I will add your words to this list.

Balance
Nourish
Restore
Savor
Relationships
Humility
New
Enthusiastic (x2)
Patience
Fearless
Improve
Less
Organize
Health
Positive (x3)

Aren't these all great words!?! I can't wait to hear how people incorporate them into their daily life in 2009. Please note, if I’ve left your word off the list, send it to me again. As I will explain in another post (to follow shortly), my computer died last weekend. My emails and address book have disappeared into the same place lost socks go in the laundry and will never be found again.

Sigh.

Once you’ve chosen a word, you should probably find a way to keep it in your thoughts. We’re all so busy it’s easy to lose focus. Last year, I created a piece of framed artwork with the word Simplify using my scrapbooking supplies. You need not go to this much trouble, but some sort of visual reminder is important, even if it’s just a post-it note on your bathroom mirror or wallpaper on your computer. Think about programming your electronic calendar to remind you periodically or writing memos on your old-fashioned wall calendar. The key is to find something that works for you.

This year, since my word focuses on being fearless in my writing, my visual reminder is an old Underwood typewriter I picked up at an antique store a few months ago. It’s pretty dilapidated, but I’ve always wanted to have one (writer geeks have weird fixations), so I’ve placed it on the table in our library where I will see it every day. I’m also going to fill up a few of my fountain pens with ink and start writing with them again. I stopped using them after Jack was born, but writing checks or grocery lists with a fine pen of free-flowing ink will remind me of the “other” writing I need to do, writing that is (hopefully) a bit more substantial and meaningful, even if it’s done on a computer…which I still haven’t replaced yet.

Sigh.

Also, share your word with others so they can support and encourage you. Speaking of which…I want to thank each of you who has offered words of encouragement relating to my writing goals for this year. I appreciate your kindness and feel so energized by your enthusiasm.

If you want to share your ideas for keeping your word in front of you, please do so in the comments. Your idea might help someone else…you just never know.

Word of the Year

For those who may not know, Ali Edwards, scrapbooking goddess extraordinaire, has a blog called {A}. Bracketed typographical cuteness aside, {A} is a great blog with lots of brilliant ideas for exploring one’s creativity. Ali has a son with autism, an amazing artistic eye, and a wonderful take on life.

Last year, her blog inspired me to pick a Word of the Year, one word to be my theme for 2008. Annoyed with my repeated failure in the New Year’s Resolutions department, I found the pick-one-word approach so appealing that I sent an email to selected friends and family inviting them to join in the fun. Eighteen decided to play along and shared their word for the year with me. We planned to touch base via email throughout the year to see how everyone honored their word. Most never responded to my follow-up emails, so I simply assumed they had lost interest and planned to drop it for 2009. I pester people enough as it is.

Besides, my own Word of the Year experiment met with only limited success. My word was Simplify, a good, solid, straightforward verb. I have a teeny, tiny tendency to make things more complicated than they need to be. Simplify seemed like a really good theme for me, and other people chose it also, including scores of the hundreds of people who posted on Ali’s blog.

The popularity of the urge to simplify speaks volumes to our modern lifestyle, don’t you think? I mean, isn’t everyone struggling with organizing all the rechargers for the many little high-tech devices we have to have? What about kids’ paperwork from school? Mail? Bills, some of which are automatic, some paid online, and some mailed via USPS? Clothes for children who grow so fast that the hand-me-downs are in really good shape and have to be stored somewhere? Your make-up drawer? Pantry? Basement? Garage?

Couldn’t all this chaos be, well, simpler?

I don’t think so. I’m rather organized, and while my bill paying and make-up drawer function more simply now than at the beginning of 2008, the only way to truly simplify the rest would require bombing my home and starting over again from scratch, dumping my very visual husband who likes his numerous belongings to be “out” where he can see them, and letting my children run wild with wolves. Wolves don’t have paperwork. Or clothes. Or health insurance.

On the whole, I’d rather keep my husband and children and put up with the chaos.

Life is a just a complicated mess. I gave up on Simplify in July when I started this blog, which complicated my life in a very good way. Then came August, which is insane for us given all of Jack’s doctors’ appointments and therapy re-evaluations, back-to-school shopping, meet-the-teacher nights, a trip to see Grandma in North Carolina, and getting ready for Ironman Wisconsin. Then school started, and George and I went to Ironman Wisconsin, and then came volunteering and running around to PTO meetings and class parties and helping with centers in the kindergarten class and making veggie pizza with preschoolers and working book fairs at two schools and meeting with teachers and counselors and the principal about Nick’s math difficulties and so on and so on and so on.

I was back in the familiar territory of Barely Managing Chaos.

Whatever.

Then one friend confessed that pursuing her word led to a depression of sorts, for which I felt weirdly responsible. When others didn’t reply to my follow-up emails about their own Words of the Year, I just assumed they had given up, too.

Never assume. In the past few weeks, five participants have asked me if we’re going to do it again and expressed disappointment when I said no. My mom wants to keep her same word—Organize—because she feels good about what she has done in 2008 and hopeful about what remains to be done in 2009.

Her enthusiasm got me thinking. Maybe people didn’t answer my emails because they were busy, not because they quit or, like me, failed. Maybe a Word of the Year really is a good idea. Maybe the need to start fresh, to try improving our lives even though sometimes we fail, serves a higher purpose. Maybe, like Ali, I should put it on my blog and invite lots of people to try it out.

Well, “lots” may be an exaggeration of my readership, but you get the idea.

If you want to take a chance with this little experiment, having received full disclosure that it may or may not work, I invite you to join me. Just pick a word as your theme for the year. Any word will do…noun, adjective, adverb, verb, interjection, conjunction. Well, maybe not a conjunction. But a preposition might do. For instance, you could choose In as your word, as in “in time,” “in tune,” “in touch,” “in step,” “in the game,” “in style.” Just find a word that speaks to your heart, your goals, and your spirit.

Once you have chosen a word, keep it in front of you all year. You can post it on your bathroom mirror or make it the wallpaper on your computer or create a work of art for your wall. One friend’s word for 2008 was Family so she beaded a bracelet with charms to remind her daily of each family member. Shortly after we started in 2008, my friend Betsy sent me a card with the word Simplify on it, credited to Thoreau, which we both thought was really funny for some reason. I tacked it up on my craft room wall.

If you feel so inclined, share your word and why you chose it in the comments below.

My word for 2009 is Fearless. Fear keeps me from trying new things, rising to challenges, and reaching out to others. Fear of failure, of looking like a fool, of embarrassing myself, of wasting my time, of being laughed at. I want to write a book about autism. I want to submit articles for publication. I want to write a card-making blog. Fear keeps me from doing these things.

I want to fear less and write more.

What do you want for 2009?