photo via Pinterest
Happy happy New Year! I hope that it has been treating you well these first five days and you are feeling off to a good start! I have been enjoying a little mini-break from the computer as I gear up to come off of my maternity leave and go headlong into a new year at work.
This year will bring the totally new experience for me of being a working mom and a business-running mom. I have been thinking a lot about that as I decided on my word for this year. How do I want to handle that? What are my goals around that? Will I be able to pull it off? Am I prepared? Can you ever be prepared? What will have to be moved to create space for all of this? Mentally, physically, emotionally….spiritually? Where will the space come from?
I love love love my job. It truly is my first baby (don’t tell Lucy) and I have worked so hard to build it and put so much on the line to maintain it, and frankly, have more than an handful of people whom I love dearly depending on me to keep making this work in a great way.
And as you might have assumed, I love love love love my babies. I want to be with them every moment (well, not EVERY… but almost) and they have already changed who I am in a profound way. I cannot wait to see how our lives unfold and who they become each day and at the same time want to stop time immediately and just hold them and hold them.
The good news is that I have worked for over 10 years to set up my life and my business in such a way that I can have an enviable amount of flexibility around work and being home with them, but the reality is, that the things that thrive, are the things that get your dedicated focus. Therein lies the pickle.
I am not the first, nor will I be the last woman to have this conversation with herself. To ask herself what is most important. Nor am I the first or last person to decide that “both” is the answer.
And so, I have chosen to “Steep” in it this year.
To steep, to soak in, to soak up, to make stronger by being immersed in or together with something. In other words, this is the bed that I have made, and I intend to lie in it.
I want to soak up every moment I can with my babies and my family and all of the creativity that that brings to my business. I want to sit still for a moment in my business and not do anything major this year, like move, or change warehouses or open up shop. That doesn’t mean I don’t want to grow or grow my business, that will happen anyway. But I want to hunker down and do what I do best and get better at what I don’t. I want to gather my rosebuds for a moment and get stronger for it.
That’s a whole lot of idioms to explain one point. I want to do less, in order to be more.
So that is my word for the year. I can’t wait to see what comes of it… the universe certainly took my 2013 word of the year quite literally…who knows where this one could land me.
What’s your word this year?
xo
