The observance of the twelve days of Christmas has ended. Daughter, born in January, and Step-daughter, born in December, are both officially a year older. 33 and 48. My family has aged. Stories of massive partying did not strafe any significant contact points with my universe. Life goes on, and I am thankful, for greeting another year. But it doesn’t feel new. I have toyed with finding the right word to describe how I feel in this new year. I toyed with saying that I have become jaded, but that is too negative. Languid might be more applicable. But I used that word perfectly once in my life, long ago, and it would be an injustice to use it less aptly.
Languid is how you sleep / my not quite husband of five years / you secure the jars too tightly / i compensate and do not seal them at all…
From an early poem by Nancy Hill
Then I thought of “sated” but I always have some aspect of myself that is boiling and bubbling away with some potential on a back burned so even though I have no strong desires pushing me to act with urgency, and over all I am content with my life, I am not sated.
Motivation
So far no single word fits me this year. I have not found a single word to describe my aspirations for the year. I question why I even consider this practice. I question why others do so.
Singular summaries are best used after the fact, or that is my determination. Merriam-Webster Webster does a great job defining 2022. Their article discussing the most searched words during several periods of the year in Word of the Year 2022 convinced me that hindsight descriptors work very well when summarizing something as grand and complex as an entire year.
Maybe this new year lingers nondescript and amorphous because I have not chosen a word to guide and inspire me for the year. I haven’t followed the color for the year closely either; it is viva-magenta according to Pantone. Why do we seem to need to put such tags on everythino?
For folks who do not do resolutions, motivational words can provide a guide, but as you can see I am having difficulty fitting a word to my aspirations.
Visualize
I am a visual person. My mind’s eye is vast and works overtime. When I think of what I want this twenty-third year of the millennium to contain, I see books floating over a farm.
I will sell some land, or my share, after some mediation as to how to best motivate some reluctant co-owners to buy me out or put the land up for auction.
I am finishing up a workbook, a datebook, and an ebook on the topic of women’s legacy.
If I can finish up these long term projects I will be a very happy camper. So after parsing all this out per words, motivation, and continuing the beginning of cycles, I think I have come up with a word that is more concept, abstraction, or representation. But then, aren’t all words?
Cyclic, infinite, returning – these concepts are all contained within an ouroboros, my concept for the year best described as endless renewal.
Known as the oldest allegorical symbol in alchemy, the ouroboros represented the concept of eternity and endless return
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20171204-the-ancient-symbol-that-spanned-millennia
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How do others find their yearly motivation? How do you? Do you know any enlightening bits of info about this practice?