On a snowy Christmas Eve, as Cigo and I walked around the back field, I finally figured out my word of the year. Care.

In some ways, care is an extension of last year’s word of the year: rest. Rest is a stretch for me, and I feel like I still have a long way to go to incorporate more rest into my life. In fact, for awhile I thought rest would be 2025’s word of the year too. But I wanted something slightly different this year.

Tromping around the field, the word “careful” came to me. Not meaning to be cautious, but to be full of care. The concept immediately connected with me. As I walked on and thought of all the different parts of my life where I want to be care-full, I decided my word of the year would be care.

Part of my goals this year is to work more on caring for myself. How I treat my body in terms of work around the farm, the food I eat, the time that I sleep, the walks I go on, the rest I take.

It’s also about being careful how I spend my time, my money, my attention. Nurturing the relationships that are important to me. Giving Ellie my full attention, staying connected with friends, helping my family as I can.

It’s also care for this farm. Working on our home is important to me and a big source of joy. Having a property and a house means maintaining them. With this farm, I also want to take more steps to improve our land. In this way, I am caring for our environment and my little part of the world.

Here’s to the year ahead, a year of care. I wish you happy new year and all the best for 2025.

Catch up on past words of the year here: Balance … Slow … Resolve … Focus … Content … Choose … Rest.

Have you made any resolutions this year? What are your goals for 2025? Anyone else have a word of the year?

I’ve been musing about what word I want to choose (last year’s word) as my guide for this year. One word keeps coming to mind, but I’ve been resisting it.

Rest.

Rest is something I’m not good at. As I’ve reflected on my words of the year, I’ve realized past words have not really been stretches for me. (Balance … Slow … Resolve … Focus … Content … Choose.)

It’s not difficult for me to focus on Ellie, Cigo, the farm. I love the life we make and I’m pretty content overall.

Rest, though. That feels hard.

Then last night, as I scrolled through my phone after Ellie went to bed, I saw this quote:

“If busyness is your drug, rest will feel like stress.”

Oh, I can identify with that.

Then another quote from the same post:

“Every single human function is improved or enhanced with sleep.”

I’ve been thinking about sleep a lot this past year. Once I go to bed, I sleep. But making myself go there is hard. Busyness wins most of the time. I can always find something else to do. Part of it is the season of life that I’m in where working til 3am sometimes feels needed. Part of it is choice.

But I’ve read about how important sleep is for long-term health, and I know I need to better.

So as I stay up later than I should tonight to write a blog post I had decided earlier today to put off, I feel like the universe is speaking to me. The word that has been floating around in my head for the last few weeks came out into the world and appeared in front of my eyes. I try to listen to the universe when it speaks. So I’m choosing rest as my word of the year.

This will be a goal for me. I’m going to have to make some changes and come up with some strategies to choose rest. But I think it’s time to stretch myself a bit more and it’s worth the attempt.

Busy is my comfort zone. Rest is not.

But here’s to a more restful 2024.

Happy New Year to you. I hope that 2024 brings goodness, whatever that looks like for you.

Last year at this time, I was aiming for “a state of peaceful happiness.” I had selected as my word of the year “content.”

I’m not sure I achieved peacefulness in 2022, but I definitely achieved happiness.

(For a refresher on my words of the year, here are the past posts: Balance … Slow … Resolve … Focus … Content.)

The summer was a turning point for me.

Heading into the summer, my mind was full. Ellie was going to be out of school for two months. We would be together every day. How was I going to work?

Then, I decided that we were going to do summer. Work was going to fit in where it fit. I was choosing us.

I’m a big believer in choosing. I choose how I look at situations, how we spend our day, how I feel about things. Making that conscious choice to focus on summer clarified my priorities and opened up so many opportunities for us. If an invitation came along, we said yes. If we wanted to playground, swim, hike, picnic, campout, bonfire we did. We had an amazing time.

That attitude has stayed with me through the fall. I’m saying yes as much as possible and choosing the balance that works for us. Some weeks that means I’m typing madly on my computer the whole time Ellie’s at school and much of the nights. Other weeks, it means I’m outside in the garden or hiking with Cigo or meeting a friend for lunch–and work fits in where it fits.

So, for my word of the year for 2023, I’m choosing “choose.”

I want to remember to choose my attitude, how I feel, how I react, how I spend my time. I’ve found that when I make a choice, there’s an acceptance that I’m letting something go in favour of something else. Being conscious of that helps me to not put (as much) pressure on myself to do everything.

I’m also choosing to build my life based on what is most important to me–Ellie, family, friends, Cigo, this farm, freedom to enjoy it all. It may not be leading to peace all the time, but it’s definitely leading to happiness.

Happy New Year to you. I hope that 2023 brings happiness for you.