Ok – the word for the year is not "adventure."  It is "discovery."

Last night (i had preposted this morning's blog in case I didn't have time – but here I am so I guess I was jumping the gun a bit)I was reading Eternal Echoes by John O'Donohue (who wrote one of my favorite books of all time,  Anam Cara).  My longest friend Linda gave it to me for Christmas.  This is what I read:

Ideally a human life should be a constant pilgrimage of discovery.  The most exciting discoveries happen at the frontiers.  When you come to know something new, you come closer to yourself and to the world.  Discovery enlarges and refines your sensibility.  When you discover something, you transfigure some of the forsakenness of the world.  nature comes to know itself anew in your discoveries.  Creative human thought adds to the brightness of the world…Each one of us has made a huge discovery that we have never gotten over.  This is the discovery of the world…We are always on a journey from darkness into light.

Obviously I read it just in time to fine tune my word for the year.  This makes me very happy!  I especially like "the frontiers" part because the story I tell myself about myself is that I'm always on the edge of things – many years my word could easily have been "leap."

I look forward to letting "discovery" guide my year much more so than my words last year.  Last year's words, prosperity and abundance, looking back seem like a wish, an act of trust in an outside force I still want to believe in – call it what you will.  This year's word feels much more proactive having to do with me, myself and I (which is where everything comes from anyways) and so I am hopeful that it will be my daily reminder that I am in charge of my life (especially on the days when I really really want someone else to take the reins for a while and please just let me float.  I don't think I came here this time just to float, but there is a part of me that longs for that and gets jealous when I see others who seem to do that, effortlessly.  Perhaps another discovery is that things don't have to be hard and that there is space between hard and float that needs exploring).

Oh, and if anyone is wondering after my post the other day, I did get my studio clean and yesterday Husband ran me over to the local oxygen and propane place and the tanks are ready for hook up (we went and exercised instead and then he worked on his current project).

May your New Year bring great new words into your lives!  Happy New Year!