We are half way through our A-Z challenge in our Word of the Year Facebook group. My word for 2019 is [Commit]. And I feel I'm not doing well with it.
'What?' you may be saying if you follow me regularly and see that I am up-to-date with my journal pages. But those are just pages. I don't feel I'm living up to my word. In the very
first post this year about my word I listed 6 things that I felt I needed for this and to be very honest I've managed about 5%.
Habits are really difficult to make - it takes time, it takes persistence. As I've reviewed the last 6 months I have felt I have let myself down in terms of commitment. But so often I only look at the negative. I saw this on Facebook the other day.
I'm not sure 'wisened' is a word!
I don't think I've looked back at the year in terms of how I've grown. I don't know where I would start to be honest. I think the value of journaling - which I don't do - is that you can look back through your journals and see where you've come from. I do know though, that I can be very hard on myself.
I was looking back through some of my blog posts and these thoughts have come up time and again. It's not a new topic! I wrote about
Creativity & Vulnerability two years ago. And found that I had used the same piece of artwork I was planning to use here. In fact this blog post began with finding this journal page.
There was a follow-up blog post
Creativity and Vulnerability Revisited where I wrote '
Quite often I feel as though I live on the periphery of my own life.
Commitment and vulnerability applies to all areas of life not just
creativity. But I am getting there. Especially if I stop saying
negative things to myself.'
Sadly I don't feel that I have moved on much in the two years since I wrote that. Perhaps that's why this year's word is Commitment.
I recently found this blog post:
How to get past the fear to do really hard things and realised that actually what I need is persistence.
I'm currently re-reading Christine Caine's book:
Unstoppable. The opening chapter is about the US 4x100 metres women's relay teams from 2000, 2004, 2008 and 2012. Whilst the teams weren't necessarily made up of the same women, it was nevertheless persistence that got these women in the teams, through the heats and finally in 2012 to win with a new world record. The US team failed in their 3 previous attempts. On a world stage! In front of millions! But there was still the desire to win. To persist! And the reward came in 2012. And again in 2016.
But I'm not on a world stage. I don't have millions of readers. Except for the odd post like this where I share my feelings, (and they are few and far between), I mostly only share my successes and occasionally my finished pieces. And lots of photos!
I shall continue to mull over the difference between commitment and persistence.
If you have a word for this year, how are you getting on with it?
Thanks for joining me today.
Bernice
Join Mary Brack, Valerie Sjodin and I in our Facebook group where we are giving participants the opportunity to live out an A-Z of their own word throughout 2019. Mary explains what we are doing in her
blog post. We don't like a lot of rules, so we will have suggestions and options to spark creativity, and to help in recording and exploring our word’s meaning in visual and fun ways. We will each blog about our experiences and our art.
Hashtags on Instagram: #livingyourword2019
Check out the other blogs:
Mary:
www.foundonbrighton.com
Valerie:
www.valeriesjodin.com/blog
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