2022 Word of the Year

Hello to all my new and returning readers and Happy New Year! I hope 2022 started off strong and healthy for you and your family.

For those who are unfamiliar, I am a huge planner / goal-oriented person. I love to set challenging goals that push me as a person (mentally, physically, and emotionally). One of my favorite methods that helps me stay on track with those goals (rather than set arbitrary or unfocused goals) is to theme them around a single word.

For example, in 2020 I selected the word Writing as my word of the year. It was vague on purpose. It was the first year that I started writing full time (mid-year) and my goal was to develop as a writer. How do you do that? You write! I set a goal of half a million words in 6 months (and crushed it). I wrote and wrote and wrote, developing the craft and making stories that I loved. I launched the Warrior Series and saw my writing flourish.

Last year, my word of the year was Growth. I worked on building my business of writing and publishing. I focused on all aspects of the game, not just writing more words. I set a goal of writing one million words (which I did not hit), I revamped my social media presence, and developed my newsletter to cater to my audience.

Now, there are a few reasons 2021 didn’t go quite as planned. My husband and I took a vacation where I didn’t write for a week. I struggled after my best friend passed away in late 2020. I took a vacation with friends that was unplanned. My grandpa passed away. I almost got my feet back under me, and then I learned I was pregnant in September.

Wow.

But all of those things served a tremendous lesson, and I’m taking that and rolling with it into 2022 with my new word of the year.

Adapt.

Things don’t always go as planned. Life happens, creativity takes a nosedive, and you can’t always predict the future. So, adapt seems like the perfect mantra to take into the new year.

adapt (v): make (something) suitable for a new use or purpose; modify. become adjusted to new conditions.

Well, this year is going to come with a lot of unknowns, specifically in the new baby department. So, I’m going to have to adapt to the new situations in my life. I’m going to have to modify my schedule, but I can’t do that until baby comes. I will have to adjust my routine and life and surround myself with a new life.

It’s all worth it, obviously, but those changes are things I can’t predict right now. I don’t know what the end of April and month of May are going to look like for my productivity and writing schedule. I can’t even predict tomorrow, because sometimes I feel great and other times I feel like garbage. I can’t get up in the morning any more because I’ve lost my ability to be a morning person.

So, I adapt.

And, of course, 2022 decided that it was really going to test my patience right out the door. Thanks to tornadoes and lightning one day and snow the next, we lost power for 44 hours. I couldn’t write (on my computer) and I only had a limited number of hours of sunlight to work around the cold house. So, I adapted my schedule. I didn’t let 2022 win and got quite a lot done during that time that wasn’t writing (sorted baby clothes, cleaned, spent silent time with the animals).

As for writing, I’m still here. I’m still chugging along and I have stuff in the works for you, but my publishing schedule isn’t going to look like it did last year or the year before. For that, I thank you for your patience and sticking with me. I promise the material is good. I’m really proud of it and I can’t wait to share it with you.

Thanks for making 2021 so great. Here’s to 2022 and adapting.