Intentions and Word of the Year for 2023
When I go back over my reflections of 2022, the words that stick out are “unfocused”, “drifting”, “waiting”. Last year I tried on a more casual approach to work, a following the feelings, see what happens approach; and not a lot did happen, because I wasn’t making anything happen. I scraped and scrabbled and it all felt so hard. I didn’t want another year like that.
But when it came to opening the spreadsheet for 2023, to start filling in the projects for the year, I was stumped; “how do I set a goal again?”;“how do I make a plan?”. I feel so out of practice with basic life organisation. Being home for Christmas with my hyper-organised mother, and meeting my slightly-above-averagely organised boyfriend really highlighted how much, in the last year, I have become pure chaos. I have become completely reactive, not forward thinking, holding everything up in the air and not noticing when something drops. It is proving to be more of a job than I anticipated to become proactive again.
And I think this is also a confidence issue. It is hard to make proactive plans when you don’t really believe you’re capable of making them happen; “who’s supposed to do all this, me?!” It’s hard to dare to dream about better, about more, when the road to get there has a gaping hole in the middle. But sometimes you have to make a decision, whether it is more important to do it anyway, in spite of it all. And it is more important. My happiness, my lightness, my life, is more important than the discomfort of getting there.
As yet I do not have specific goals per se, because one thing I don’t want to do this year is rush in. That was reactive me last year, getting an idea and running with it without thinking, without researching, without making it good. It was needing a cash injection so quickly that I didn’t take time over things, which led to a need for further and further injections and no space to figure out what was actually happening. So, in lieu of SMART goals for the time being, here are some focuses for the year ahead in my work.
A firm foundation
When I think ahead to December 2023, I want to be approaching the new year with some confidence and clarity about what my business is going to look like and how I’m going to earn, as opposed to the “wtf am I going to do?” with which I’ve landed in this year. I want to spend time figuring out the best shape for this business, what it needs to do – for you and for me. I’ve been swinging wildly across the spectrum of financial abundance to fulfilment and never really found the sweet spot – it’s time to pause the pendulum and start gently feeling for the right balance again.
Part of this is figuring out what it is I actually do. For the last year I have squirmed when anyone has asked me, which I think is a tell that something’s not right. There has been a tension building between me as a writer and me as the business owner of Simple & Season, where I haven’t been sure how the two co-exist. There is some thinking to do around this, a figuring out of all the roles, all the pieces that make up my work play.
In my striving for total fulfilment they’ve all been under significant pressure to perform, and now I’m wondering what it might be like to separate some of it out. Might it be ok if S&S wasn’t the most fulfilling part of my work/life, but it paid for and made space for things that were? What would it look like if that was the case? Committing this work, this business, deciding that it will form this firm foundation, is going to take some shimmying and some thought about how it’s been built.
The writing
Every year there is a writing goal. Every year I sort of do it, yet every year I feel like I haven’t – I expect because every year I didn’t go for it. I did a few things, I wrote things I was proud of, and yet I chickened out of the pitches and projects I really wanted to do. This year I’m taking a different approach.
For the first time in two years, I am not intending to “write the book” this year. Perhaps this is a little bit of reverse psychology, taking the pressure off. But mostly I want to feel free to write things that may not be for the book without feeling guilty that all my writing should be for a book. I want to publish articles and essays and work on pieces that I can submit when something fits. I want to take myself seriously and professionalise my approach to my writing so that it’s not something I mostly just daydream about.
My relationship with myself
2022 was a year of self-abandonment, and I don’t ever want to do that again. I don’t want to wait and drift and allow myself to feel like I’m not enough. Now I am also conscious that I don’t want to lose my relationship with myself within my new relationship, and I am aware of how easily I could let myself do that. I want to continue to date myself, I want to meet my own needs and wants and not have my happiness and sense of self depend on anyone else.
Richness
When I think about how I want 2023 to feel it is rich. It is expansive and content and full. I want to throw my head back laughing and read more books and cry in the cinema and dance with my friends and hold hands and go to Paris on my birthday and drink flat whites in bed and walk up some new hills. I want lightness and confidence and assuredness; I want richness.
Word Of The Year 2023
Coming up with my word this year was a different experience. Usually I’ve got my word for the new year in October, always eagerly looking forward. But this year, I sort of forgot about it completely, and when December rolled around I didn’t have any ideas – just a gap when I thought about what the new year should be. In the end it came to me in that inbetween of Christmas and New Year, a word in my mind that said “I am your word of the year”: More.
It makes sense, I think, after a year of drifting and waiting. This year I want to do more, to try more, to take myself more seriously. I want to demand more of myself, and demand more of what I deserve without crumpling. I want to reach and grasp for more: whether that’s making 1% more effort on a work day or planning and expecting for more than feels necessarily comfortable. More effort, more belief, more love, more openness, more abundance, more richness.
