How I’m Challenging 2021’s Uncertainty with My Word of the Year

After a year of hardship, I’m choosing something different

I don’t believe in New Year’s Resolutions. I stopped setting them at some point in my twenties, when “lose those last 10 pounds” had been my resolution for ten years straight and I realized that setting goals I couldn’t achieve was doing more harm than good.

By the time I was in my thirties, I’d noticed that the trend was to pick a word for the year — something that would encapsulate how one wanted to direct their energy. I started participating in this practice in 2015 and I’ve continued every year since. I love it. I love the idea of facing the year with a sense of mindfulness — instead of striving, instead of reaching, instead of trying harder and doing more.

Sadly, my word for 2020, DARE, fell a little short, being as there isn’t a lot you can safely DARE to do in a pandemic. In fact, early in the year, I completely forgot that I had chosen this word, at all.

Some daring occurred, but as I look ahead to 2021, I wonder if I should carry this word through? Use it a second time?

Something tells me, though, that it’s important to pick something different. To start fresh.

When I began thinking about this, the very first word that popped into my mind was EASE. The past year was so unbelievably hard. And for me, the past five years have been so hard. In fact, the five years before that were so hard, too.

I can’t really say that I’ve had a sustained period of time — like, even weeks — in which things have gone really well or easily.

My friend Sunny and I often joke about this (because it’s too painful to talk about it seriously). If life is supposed to be a balance, why is it so consistently hard? There are long periods we go through in struggle and pain, but where’s the other side of that? Where are the long stretches of time when things are mostly good, or at least kinda easy?

And even in all of this struggle of the past year, it is obvious that there is a lot more to do, a long way to go, and much work and hardship ahead if we want to contribute to a better world. (And I do.)

Even still…there is a part of me that rebels against the idea that it has to be so hard, so difficult, so endlessly challenging.

That’s the story our culture tells us. Work harder. Do more. Stay up later. Suffer more. All these things are supposedly markers of progress, right?

But if there’s anything the pandemic confirmed, it’s that working harder and longer doesn’t necessarily correlate with productivity or even success.

I’m interested in challenging this cultural dynamic, and choosing the word EASE feels like a great way to do that. Not to mention a welcome breath of fresh air.

Admittedly, I do have goals for 2021, even with the word EASE. But I feel like they’re related to the theme, which makes them easy.

For instance, I want to stop checking my email 3–6 times an hour. It’s getting a little worrisome how addicted I’ve become to that habit which definitely does not align with ease.

I want to spend less time creating content for social media. Largely, it doesn’t amount to much engagement, so unless I’m doing it for the purpose of connection, I feel like I need to cut back on that.

I definitely want to cut back on giving feedback to others. Mostly, within my professional circles, it hasn’t been an issue. But I cannot count the times my younger “IRL friends” have specifically asked me for detailed feedback with their professional projects only to email me, after I send them a two-page account of everything I loved and any tips that might make something better, and apologize because they “don’t have time to read it.” I’m done adding work to my to-do list for people who say they wants lots of feedback and then can’t even be bothered to skim my response when I take the time to give them what they asked for.

On that note, I’m yet again seriously questioning my presence on Facebook. I have about 150 friends on my personal account and I cannot help but think about the fact that I would not even be in touch with half of them anymore if social media didn’t exist. It just doesn’t feel normal to me to have all these digital relationships that don’t mean very much to me. I don’t want to keep creating the extra emotional and physical bandwidth that these “relationships” take up in my (digital) life.

I also need more breaks away from my work. That has been a constant struggle these past five years — something I have yet to consistently practice in any form. I need to have at least half a day a week away from my computer, and a full day a week away from all work-related tasks. Taking a break just for a couple days around Christmas has made me see how necessary this is.

Speaking of Christmas, I want easier holidays. Having a simple one this year only confirmed that. (Though I’m not the one in our family who can make this call — but I might choose to risk conflict by opting out of helping to prep for future holidays if others insist on keeping up the stressful grandiosity.)

I also want to give myself a break on trying to be so nice to everyone, even when they are not nice to me, even when they cross a line, even when they basically have nothing to do with me. Maybe, perhaps, I can give myself a pass on sending Christmas cards to the cousins who never send me cards or answer my comments on social media. Maybe I can give myself a pass on trying so hard to build good relationships with my neighbors when they never acknowledge me on the holidays, don’t answer my “how ya doing” texts, and don’t thank me for all the fresh produce I leave by their front doors every summer.

I want more ease — hell, more easy. And maybe that will give me more energy and strength to tackle the really challenging things that I actually want to put my energy toward.

There are other words I could choose for 2021. Other things I want to focus on. Other directions I could take.

But somehow, I feel like I have to face the past five years head on. I have to stop this freight train that has been pulling me along behind it for so long. I have to make a conscious effort to stop pushing so damn hard in ways that are ultimately inefficient and unhelpful to the greater good.

And in doing that, I will have to make choices that will cause conflict. My EASE is going to create a lot of strife. Not so easy, I can tell you that right now.

Again, that makes me feel like this is the right path. Fighting against the inertia of my habitual behavior. Making new choices. Threatening the status quo.

Those tend to be results of healthy choices, right?

I just want to work on changing the relentless pace I’ve been trying to maintain for the past five years and cutting out as much extraneous nonsense as possible. That’s exactly where I need to be putting my energy.

Best of all, I feel like this is something I can actually accomplish, whether or not I’m stuck at home in a pandemic. So yes, 2021: I’m coming for you. From my bubble bath, where you can’t defeat me…

© Yael Wolfe 2020

Ruminating on change: