Crank It to ELEVEN!!!

HAPPY 2011 ONE AND ALL! Goodbye, 2010. Hello, twenty-eleven.

Finally. We've survived 2010, and the flyleaf on this year has just been turned. Bright, shiny, new. Rife with infinite possibility.

It's gotten off to an interesting start already. Yesterday, the temperature was in the 50s. At 2:30 AM, not long after the ball drop (or wig-drop, if you preferred Bravo's festivities as I did), the Weather Channel reported the outside temperature to be 53 degrees.

What's more is that we were having a full-on, rumbling thunderstorm complete with lightning and pouring rain. On January 1st. In OHIO.

Odd, yes, but I'll gladly take this over below-zero wind chills, blinding snow, and icicles.

I figure, if the year got off to this weird of a start, it HAS to bode well for an interesting, out-of-the-ordinary (in a good way) year.

Not that last year was the worst of all possible years (that was 2006); it just wasn't... in motion. It was as stagnant as the last four. I didn't blog much because there wasn't much to blog about. Being that I practice non-whining as much as possible, well...

Anyway. Have you heard of Christine Kane's Word of the Year exercise? I tried it last year. First, I typed up a long list of possible words, printed them out, cut them into strips, folded them, stuffed them in a hat, and after a glass of champagne at midnight, I reached into the hat and pulled. In typical over-achiever fashion, I chose two words as my focal points for 2010:


Well, the Universe has quite a sense of humor. I've definitely experienced clarity in a lot of my more confusing areas; as for balance, I thought it would put ME in balance. Ha ha. No. The Universe showed me just how out of balance my life has been, and threw a few things out of balance just for fun, to prove the point. Lesson learned: be more careful about the words you choose. Always consider the negative connotations of the words as well as the positive.

Instead of being on point in the perfect middle, I found things swinging wildly all year, especially with my finances and emotions. It was also evident when I did NaNoWriMo. There is a much better way to approach it (by writing the suggested 1,667 words per day for 30 days to get to 50,000 by the 30th) than I did (procrastinate until November 20th, then pull all-nighters to cram it in during the last 10 days).

But it's all good. I've studied my lessons, and I've let go of those words.

Last night, I located the ziploc baggie of words (amazing in this mess). Since a year has passed, I'm not even sure what words are in there. Plenty to see me through the next 50 years of my life, that's for sure. I silently asked the Universe to guide me to the word that most needs to be my focus for 2011.

What would it be? Something like "magical"? "Gratitude"? "Abundance"? "Success"? Something that will motivate me to push forward in my life filled with courage and strength?

I shuffled and shuffled the strips. I thought about all the possibilities. I filled myself with excitement at the prospect of the new word. And then, finally, when it felt "right", I pulled out a single strip of paper and opened it eagerly.

The word?

Oh, you HAVE to be kidding me. Seriously?

But no. There it was, in delicate, bold script.







Sigh.

Universe, you are SUCH a nag sometimes, you know that?

So there it is. My WOTY is "purge". My first thought of course leans toward purging the house of the chaos of left-behind possessions that I've been avoiding for the past four years. Of course, I'm sure it will come to mean more than just housework. These WOTY tend to reach into the heart of matters you weren't even aware needed attention.

Will I purge my old, out-moded belief systems? my soul? my digestive tract?

Will I purge myself of the backlog of novels that have begged to be written for years?

Will I cull my social network and purge those who no longer fit?

Will I toss out dreams that should have died peacefully ages ago—dreams that belonged to a somebody I used to be but haven't been in decades—to make room for the newer, more precise dreams that align better with who I've become?

What other sorts of things can be "purged"?

It will be interesting to find out. I felt very let down initially by the choice, but I resolve to sally forth, and to crank my purge to eleven.

To think, purge-chance to dream...

Labels: word-of-the-year, WOTY

posted by Jeanne @ 9:43 PM