pophyn’s next blog

Okay, I signed up for #reverb10. It’s the now annual event, the continuation of #best09 from last year. A prompt a day, all month long, to contemplate 2010 and reveal 2011. In the way of my world, the evening after I signed up, I discovered a new Twitter book club and I joined in for that, too. So this will be a busy month.

The December 1 prompt (yep, already behind), is: One Word. Encapsulate 2010 in one word. Then jump ahead a year; what would you like to the word for 2011 to have been. (Author: Gwen Bell)

It’s very hard for me to think of a word for 2010. My life flowed on all year but nothing major happened. I started to think of words like waiting, asleep, and on-hold. But I wasn’t asleep and my life hasn’t been on-hold; I just kept going on an even keel. Looking back, I think I’ve been adapting and adjusting. 2008 and 2009 were hard years with a lot of loss. I think I spent 2010 trying to come to terms with things and accept all of it. I wasn’t consciously doing that and I know I haven’t totally accepted it all, but on reflection, I think that was my mode all year long. It would be nice to say my word is acceptance, but I’m not sure I’m there yet. But one word for the year is adjustment.

On the other hand, there is something that does stand out in my mind right now. I’ve jumped back into reading this past year, reading avidly. In college and in the years that followed it, I read a lot. Then I lost that, mostly because I went through a period when I was busy working long, long hours on projects at work, and got behind with the massive amounts of comics I collected and then felt I had to catch up on them before I could start a book. So I only read books when I was traveling, on planes and during visits away from home. That lasted a while, decades, in fact. A few years ago, I called a halt to that. I stopped buying comics to add to the backlog. I got a library card and I also dug through some unpacked boxes of books in my cellar. I rediscovered my love of books. And looking back over 2010, that is the one activity that I see not just being a part of my year but intensifying all year long. So another word for 2010 is reader.

And what do I want for 2011? To be able to look back in a year and have a sense of satisfaction with the year that will just have flown by? I’d like it to be growth. I’d like to reach my acceptance and move on. I’d like to try new things and I’d like to improve who I am. I know we can always be doing this, should always be doing this, but I don’t feel like I did that much this past year. And so I call it out for 2011.