My 2015 Word of the Year.

Oh resolutions, how I love/hate you. In past years I’ve gone all-out with resolutions and usually fall a little bit short in living up to them. Last year I had just one simple resolution: be better at keeping in touch with my family, particularly my grandparents. I think I did a fairly good job with that one, this blog, email and social media helped me a lot with that goal (and if you’re reading — Hi Gram!). This year I heard a piece of advice about picking a ‘word of the year’ to embody how you want to live your next 365 days as a more productive way to set goals than the typical bulleted list of tactical resolutions people make. Thinking about some of the things I wanted to achieve this year I found one word that ties all of my intentions for 2015 together… my word of the year is thoughtful. And now for a bulleted, tactical list of how I plan to be more thoughtful in 2015 (hey, Type-A or bust, right?):

• I’d like to be a bit more thoughtful with my words. I can actually name more instances than I care to admit in the last few months where I have really put my foot in my mouth. I hate that feeling in my stomach that happens a few moments after leaving a conversation when I wonder if what I said was too harsh or maybe a bit too sassy or perhaps more honest than people were bargaining for? I do think speaking your mind and being honest is a good quality but I hope this year I can pause even a few milliseconds before I blurt out my thoughts and make sure they’re a bit more kind and valuable. (Full disclosure: this will be quite a challenge for me, I’ve been a big-mouth for almost 30 years now.)
• I hope to be more thoughtful with how I spend my time. I have no intention of hosting a pity party here but 2014 was BUSY for me. I have a great job that I enjoy, and I also have a side-hustle here with this blog that I adore, and I also love investing time and energy into the Boston Bloggers community. I’ve juggled all of these fairly well in the past, but I am guilty of two things that I think I could get better at to make my time more productive. One: I love to mark the easy stuff off my to-do-list which means the weekly blog posts always get published before any BIG IDEA projects get my time. Two: I multi-task and get distracted very easily. No excuses here, I think this is something a lot of people I know are struggling with… you take a quick break to scroll through instagram and then all of a sudden you’ve wasted 30 minutes, or you look up from your computer and suddenly get sucked into a terrible TV show that you wished you hadn’t wasted your time on. So, I’m going to be more thoughtful in 2015 about (attempting to) focus on the task at hand and be more thoughtful about prioritizing projects/events/BIG-ideas that worthy of my time. (And hey, I’m already working on this! I just tried really hard not to check Facebook mid-writing this post!)
• I would like to be more thoughtful about how I spend my money. What is it about the beginning of year that makes you look around your home and say — how did all of this crap get in here? Here is my problem: I love a good dig into the dollar-bin at Target, I love an extra 40% off sale at J.Crew and gosh I love a useless vintage knick-knack.  These things tend to result in: spending money on things I don’t need, followed by things I don’t need cluttering my apartment, and then ending in me feeling stressed about money and not having enough space. This isn’t something I think I’ll fix entirely in 2015 but I’d at least like to implement the same practice with my words that I do with my purchases… just a short pause before I hit ‘order’ or pull out my wallet to ask — do I really need this? Do I have a place for this? Is this something that is of high-quality or supports a great local-business? I hope being a bit more thoughtful about what I’m spending my money on will help me save (space and dollars!) in the long run.
• I’d also like to be a bit more thoughtful about where I place my energy. Isn’t it just so easy to let jealousy or negativity or frustration slip into your daily life? I know I have gotten much better about focusing my energy on good-vibes and pushing out some of the bad — but it’s a work in-progress. So in 2015 I’d like to continue to be thoughtful about where I spend my energy. If looking at someone’s instagram pictures of an amazing vacation makes me a little jealous, I hope I can take a break from the iPhone and focus my energy on something that betters me. If I get frustrated at work with a situation that’s out of my control, I hope I can focus on my gratitude for having employment that allows me the time to pursue these awesome side projects. If I feel negativity creeping in for not yet reaching certain goals with this blog or playing the comparison game with others that have achieved something I want, I hope I can focus on all of the great things that I’ve already accomplished and let that fuel some positive energy to get me where I want to go. Easier said than done, right?

It’s easy to feel all jazzed and energized in January about these resolutions. Writing them out here always makes me feel more accountable and to help keep that feeling going I’m going to pop a couple of random reminders in my calendar throughout the year with a link to this post and I’m also going to print out this illustration of the definitions of thoughtful to keep these all top of mind.

I owe a very big thanks to Posh & Prep for hand-lettering my ‘word of the year’ into this lovely print, and an extra special thanks for her allowing me to share it with you! Happy New Year!

Download your own copy of the print here.