My Three Words by Chris Brogan. Pick any three words that you can use to guide you forward to success in the coming year.

Peace. Art. Friends.

PEACE came to me right away, I mean before I even tried to think of my words for the year I heard PEACE in my head. My gosh I wish for peace. Peace of mind. Peace on earth. Give me all the PEACE in 2020 please. Because looking back on my 2019 and (gulp) 2018—-and 2017, it hasn’t felt very peaceful.

With the giant all-encompassing hope for mankind word out of the way, the next one that jumped into my head was ART. ART is a selfish word. I want to make more ART. Hell, at this point, ANY ART. Writing? Blogging! Journaling! I lost my writing mojo as soon as community theater took hold of my life. I miss blogging. And I’ve always loved the idea of painting…I want to paint this year. No, I WILL PAINT THIS YEAR. I WILL MAKE ART. Period.

I had a few alternating ideas floating around for my 3rd word, it didn’t come as fast and furious as the first two. I thought “quiet” for a while. But quiet reminded me a lot of peace. (Quieting my mind…peace.) So, I came up with FRIENDS. I’m one of those rare birds, it appears, who meets a TON OF NEW PEOPLE and acquires lots of wonderful new friendships. I absolutely had a time in my life where I was floating around without a bunch of close by kindred souls…right at the time everyone was marrying and having babies and I was…most certainly not doing either. But shortly after that, I started my blog—and WHAM-O. Like-minded souls everywhere. I also tend to maintain friendships over time. You know those work friends you have but then don’t have when you don’t work there anymore? Yeah. Nope. I still keep in touch with people from several of my past employers. And hobbies, and people I dated. The list goes on.

So choosing the word FRIENDS for me, isn’t about cultivating new friendships but spending quality time with the old. We all get caught up in our current friend circles and see those people the most, but what about the others? I want to actively make lunch dates, dinner dates, theater dates, brunch dates, game night dates, concert dates…with those I haven’t hung out with in a while. First and foremost, I’m desperate to reconnect with people close to me — (which ironically, happens to be FAMILY I count as FRIENDS.)

You see, I’ve been depressed. For quite sometime.  (The last two years, on and off, honestly.) The idea of going out to even see people I love, made me want to hide and after all is said and done, it exhausted me. No more. NO MORE. I’ve had an adjustment in my meds a month ago (as in, doubling the dosage) and suddenly, I’m starting to remember the feeling of not wanting to hide. The fact that this feels foreign to me, really scares me. I’m an off the chart extrovert. (And an empath with depression & anxiety.) What shitty haze have I been living in for the last two years?

PEACE. ART. FRIENDS. I can do this.  Bring on 2020!

What were My Three Words for 2019?

Stability, Balance and No.

I did a lot of explaining why I chose those words in the post above. Turns out I did a pretty good job this year with these three words! GO ME!

Stability.

Last year at this time was the first time HWMMS and I both were working full-time (or in my case way more than full-time) at the same time. Stability comes with steady income. Routine. Just a few short weeks into the New Year I realized I had a very unique opportunity to go two entirely different directions professionally. I chose the only way my soul knows – and the Foundry ended up bringing me on Full-Time as the Community Relations & Business Manager. And as of this moment in time, I can’t even imagine a more perfect job for me. I’m a very, very lucky soul.

Balance & No.

“I’m not my professional life.” – Me, 2018.

I’m happy to say, I have found this balance by the end of the year. Ok, not completely, but at least 90%. Of course this comes with not doing freelancing and PT work professionally, I now have a FT position with varying hours day, night, weekends, so it was quite easy to say NO when opportunities came up for additional freelance or volunteer gigs. I was definitely burned out on doing all the things…that I do for work, outside of work. Sigh of relief.