I don’t really do New Year’s Resolutions. If I have a need or desire to make a change in my habits or focus, I tend to do it as needed. The Christmas holidays are usually too full for me to start thinking about those things on January 1 anyway.
I am also a slow-processer. I over-think. I need time to ruminate on things. So yeah, New Year’s Resolutions don’t work for me. Instead, I sometimes have picked a word of the year to focus on. I did this for 2022, but keeping with my glacial pace in thinking about things, it wasn’t until March that I actually felt I had found the words that fit the season I am in.
So here I am in May, getting around to sharing my words for 2022. Oh well! When you think about what the words are, it all makes sense.
My first word for 2022 is… AWKWARDNESS.
Why awkwardness? Because that’s the season I am in. I am promoting AJ’s Neighborhood, out in the querying trenches, and trying to make connections as a professional author. It’s awkward! I get stage fright at public speaking. I’m not good at networking. I feel uncomfortable talking about myself. But I have been doing all those things lately because it comes with the job. I feel very awkward doing it, but I have decided to embrace the awkwardness and not let it keep me from doing the things I need to do.
My second word for 2022 is… COMPLICATED.
This word is a reminder to me. It’s so easy for me to get caught up in doom scrolling and reading hot takes on the internet about politics and society and all the big issues. The rage machine that is the social media and the internet are not really good at conveying the complexities of these issues or facilitating discussions about them. There’s a lot of shouting each other down. That’s not how I want to me in my interactions online or in person. I have my opinions and beliefs, and many passionate ones at that. But I want to keep the fact that things are complicated in the front of my mind. People are complicated. There’s a lot of gray to our current dilemmas and I want to be a person to sees complexity, and let’s complexity be a part of my thinking. I don’t want to sit with false binaries that it seems we are often forced to choose between. And I hope in doing so I can encourage others to do the same. I think embracing complexity will make our arguments more compassionate and our solution-seeking more productive. Hopefully.
So thanks for joining me on this journey, and here’s to a year of more awkwardness and complexity!
Judy Campbell-Smith 