I have wandered far away from my roots in the scrapbooking world. That’s where I’ve spent the most time employed as a crafter, but for a long complicated list of reasons I wound up largely leaving it behind. I’m so woefully out of step I actually had to ask some old scrapbooking friends what the best papertrimmer was when mine finally gave up the ghost during this year’s card making. Embarrassing.
Despite my absence, even I follow Ali Edwards. She was huge even before I ventured off the scrapbooking path and it seems like her influence has only grown. She’s seriously inspiring.
Every year she has a tradition where she picks her Word of the Year. A word that she carries with her throughout the year, allowing it to influence how she thinks, interacts, spends her time. I’m normally so up in my own head, obsessing about what’s in front of me and what else I want to do, that it really takes an awful lot for someone else’s plans to sink in, but when I first came across this last year it really left a mark.
2009 was a watershed year for me in a lot of ways. I had so many experiences, dropped in front of me like breadcrumbs, that led to my vision opening up and allowed me to let go of a lot of the obstacles I’d created for myself. Too many to even recount, and the impact it’s had on me is so profound I don’t know if I can even really begin to discuss it without a whole lot of tortured purple prose. I guess I can sum it up by saying that in 2009 I got over myself and realized that what I want for my life isn’t some magical concoction, just work.
So my word for 2010 is Begin.
My whole life I’ve wanted to be a writer. That’s what got me to start this blog five long years ago, but I’ve been so terrified of failure. I’ll get an idea for a big project but stall out because I worry about the results of success. I am a cart before the horse thinker. So this year I’m going to stop it. I’m sure I won’t be able to stop my obsessive mind from running through every scenario of success or failure and everything in between, but this year I won’t let it stop me.
I’m going to take a deep breath, ignore the hum in my head, and just. Begin.
