{"id":2891,"date":"2023-01-01T07:33:13","date_gmt":"2023-01-01T13:33:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thewandergirl.com\/?p=2891"},"modified":"2023-01-02T16:13:51","modified_gmt":"2023-01-02T22:13:51","slug":"word-2023-essential","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thewandergirl.com\/2023\/01\/word-2023-essential\/","title":{"rendered":"My Word of the Year for 2023: Essential"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Last year, in a rush of frustration and unexpected clarity, <a href=\"https:\/\/thewandergirl.com\/2022\/12\/2022-my-year-of-no\/\" data-type=\"post\" data-id=\"2862\">I chose &#8220;No&#8221; as my word of the year<\/a>. It turns out that was an excellent choice, and it helped me to shape my year into something both constructive and manageable. It&#8217;s amazing what we can accomplish by giving ourselves permission to NOT do the thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In a similar vein, and to build on what I worked on last year, my word for 2023 is &#8220;Essential.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now that doesn&#8217;t mean I&#8217;m cutting out all the fun extracurricular stuff. Quite the opposite. I&#8217;ve made a goal list for the year, not so much tasks I must complete, but things I want to invite into my life, or have more of. A list of what I want to hold space for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I won&#8217;t post my entire list, but here are a few examples of the kinds of goals I have for 2023:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>Finish and polish my novel-in-progress<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Take more pictures<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Make plans and time to do more hiking<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Spend more dedicated time with my dog, Cooper, who turns 16 this March<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Meditate daily<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Actively nurture my relationships, and reach out to friends I haven&#8217;t spoken with in a while<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>These, among others, are my essentials for 2023. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Obviously I will still need to be a rockstar at my corporate job and pay my taxes and brush my teeth and do laundry and make dinners and clean house and and and. The list of have-to-dos could wrap around my town and back and not be complete. But on neither my goals list nor task list is &#8220;worry uselessly about the state of the world&#8221; or &#8220;spend several hours on social media&#8221; or &#8220;wonder why that person didn&#8217;t follow me back&#8221; or &#8220;hold on to anger so strongly that it keeps me up at night&#8221; or &#8220;agonize over what I said in earnest that might have been taken the wrong way.&#8221; Also not on these lists is &#8220;buy things I don&#8217;t need for an extra hit of dopamine&#8221;\u2013\u2013is that shiny new thing essential, based on what I really want and what truly matters? It probably isn&#8217;t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The one constant we all have, and will always have, is the limit of time. (Unless you have a time turner or machine, in which case, please share with me, your new best friend, and we will have the wildest of adventures!) I want to spend my time making things\u2013\u2013pencil to paper, camera to eye, stringing words together until a story falls out\u2013\u2013and building relationships. And in order to make time for these essentials, those other things have to go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There is a yogic breath exercise that I&#8217;m fond of: on the in-breath, you breathe in a thing you want more of, and on the out-breath, you release something that no longer serves you. &#8220;Inhale joy, exhale anger. Inhale relaxation, exhale tension.&#8221; This is how I&#8217;m starting my new year, by inviting in what matters and releasing what doesn&#8217;t, and then closing the door on all that stuff that I don&#8217;t want to let back in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Year of No #2, refocusing on what&#8217;s essential.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What are your goals for this year, and do you have a word that represents them?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last year, in a rush of frustration and unexpected clarity, I chose &#8220;No&#8221; as my word of the year. It turns out that was an excellent choice, and it helped me to shape my year into something both constructive and manageable. It&#8217;s amazing what we can accomplish by giving ourselves permission to NOT do the&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2923,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wprm-recipe-roundup-name":"","wprm-recipe-roundup-description":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[142],"tags":[489,494,466,480,501,499],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewandergirl.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2891"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewandergirl.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewandergirl.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewandergirl.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewandergirl.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2891"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thewandergirl.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2891\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2961,"href":"https:\/\/thewandergirl.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2891\/revisions\/2961"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewandergirl.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewandergirl.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewandergirl.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewandergirl.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}