In years past my word of the year has come to me so easy. Usually it’s popped into my head a month or two before the year is over and I’m crazy excited to see how it works in my life. This year was different. November came, and I started thinking. Before I knew it December was here, nearly over and still nothing had jumped out at me. As the days flew by and I was busy with the kids, prepping for Christmas and looking for a job it was always in the back of my head. Finally on a whim I chose embrace. I whipped up a hoop with some letter board letters, hung it on the wall, posted on Facebook and declared “embrace” as my word of the year for 2018. 

For the next two days embrace was staring at me, right in the face everywhere I went and the feeling I had wasn’t a good one. Next week I start a new job, a full time job after having only worked part time here and there for the past 13 years. The following week I start school part time, after not having been a student since 1999. Every time I thought of the word I’d cringe. I kept thinking to myself that there isn’t enough of me to go around, there’s no way I’m going to have time in my days to embrace all that I truly wanted. My initial thoughts were that I’d fully embrace my family, my boyfriend/our relationship, my job, school, my friends, others who needed help and so on. Waves of stress rushed over me and I truly started to feel my anxiety creep up every time I thought about what it was going to take out of me to fully live “embrace” this year. So yesterday while Grant and I were sitting on the couch talking, I told him that I couldn’t do it, I had to change the word. How could I live a word that was already stressing me out and giving me anxiety? Of course I want to choose a word that will push me, challenge me and hopefully in the end enrich my life and make me a better person. But what I don’t want is a word that is already freaking me out, making me stress and causing major anxiety. 

I went to sleep last night with a sense of calm, just knowing that something would come to me. And in the morning it did. 

Balance

2018 is going to be busy and full and such a combination of hard work, long days and small amounts of time for me to be with the ones I love and still find time to do the things I love. That sentence right there screams to me that I’m going to need balance in my life. My kids, my family, my boyfriend, friends, school, and work will be the most important things in my life and it will be hard work to balance all of it, but I’m confident that I can do it. I thrive when I’m busy, when I have a full plate and I’m thrilled to see where the year takes me, where it takes us! Balance will be on my mind though, every waking moment of the day, because I’m important too. While my plate may be full and there are a handful of people who will need me, I’m going to have to remember to take care of myself. 

In the past year there have been so many changes and things finally seem to be settling some. For that I’m thankful. There are a whole new set of changes coming in the next few weeks and I can’t wait. Finding that balance is exhilarating to me! Sometimes I do my best when under pressure, let’s just hope that rings true for this year. Next December I hope to look back and see that I did a great job at keeping myself happy, my kids happy, my relationship happy and growing, my friendships better than they were in years past, my time well spent with people that mean the most to me. I want to be proud of the person that I became but not forget the person that I was. 

What is your word of the year? Have you chosen one?

The post Balance: What it means for me and my life this year. appeared first on .