Dear 2024: What's Your Word?

Last year I did a post similar to this one where I set out hopes and light goals for the new year (link to my Dear2023 post). No, these weren’t resolutions. I cannot remember the last time I made a New Year’s resolution. These were just little “Lord Willing’s” going out from my hopes and dreams to the universe and the powers that be.

At this year’s start, my friend Makayla brought to my attention the practice of identifying one word that carries you throughout the new year.

Now, I have never engaged in this practice because, as a lover of words, how could I chose just one for a whole year? But this year, choosing a theme to carry my hopes certainly wouldn’t hurt. Right?

word of the year

I want my word of the year to reflect the amount of hope that I am bringing into my life.

Hope is something that I reserve for people with better luck than my own. Unfortunately, I’ve largely found hoping and desiring to be more tiring than anything else. But for this year, I’m really looking into things with a better lens while still acknowledging that I am familiar with the general flow of my life and luck.

However, to be hopeful is such a beautiful thing because it forces an amount of optimism that could truly be of benefit in getting through life today. There’s a lot about life that can and will get you down, if you let it. However, hope can truly be the catalyst for change that is needed to turn the corner into a more vibrant existence, which is what I’m working towards.

I also want my word of the year to encapsulate wanderlust because I’m feeding my thirst for adventure and newness this year.

I’ve been sitting around and waiting for some arbitrary signal that my hard work thus far had paid off, or for some fantastical lotto-sized sum of money to fall into my bank account before booking trips and life is just passing me by. I think to myself, “do I want to die having seen and done only what I’ve seen and done?”. The answer is ‘no’. That’s simply not enough.

As a young woman who has truly worked at “doing it all” for quite some time, I really want to enjoy more instead of constantly piling on more pressure to continue to bulk up my resume. I’m learning that, the things that I do and the bullet points on my resume have always been fun to collect but, in knowing myself, I know that I require more than just this. There’s more to my success than what I know, what jobs I have and what degrees I have.

I also want my word to encompass my desire for access.

My life has centered on creating opportunity for myself and my immediate family. I’ve worked at us having and going and doing, but without access, there truly is no opportunity.

This is where a lot of people tow the line of inauthenticty because they’ll end up doing anything and being anyone to get access. I, however, want to forever remain conscious of my desire and how I go about fulfilling it.

While I am impressive on my own, sometimes it truly does fall on who you know (and who they know) or on who has better luck out of the two of you (to which I can always conclude that it won’t be me).

Access is imperative to unlocking new worldly experiences. It’s imperative to meeting life-changing, like-minded individuals. And it’s imperative to growth.

So, what is my word?

SANGUINITY

Meaning, “optimistic or positive… the optimistic feeling that all is going to turn out well”.

All is going to go well within my careers. All is going to go well within my family. All is going to go well within my love life. All is going to go well within my travels. All is going to go well within my creativity… my writing. All will simply be well, Lord willing. Not because things will be perfect, but because I am optimistic, hopeful even, that things will go how they’re supposed to go. I’m living in assuredness that my vibrant existence seemingly begins here.

Pheww! It was hard to pick one, but we did it! What’s your word of the year?

Best,
Bree 🩵