Entering 2024 With a Simple Mindset

 

The year is twenty-twenty-four.  While I take a moment for my brain to load that bewildering number, let me ask you a question....  do you have a special word for the year?  

I remember carefully choosing the word for the year - a tradition I was inspired to begin years ago - and dragged my best friend into it.  But somewhere along the way, the years became a bit too overwhelming, and the pressure to live up to the one sacred word-of-the-year became too much.

Maybe it was the year I chose the word, Joy... and then for years I had to learn to choose joy.  

Learn to scrape it from the depths, if necessary.

This year I joked with my friend that my word of the year was going to be "ketchup"... because my life is about as messy as a bottle of ketchup in a large-family fridge - AND because we need to spend about an entire year playing ketchup catch-up with all the things we've been falling behind on for the last 10 years, give or take.

Clutter... house repairs... home organization... vehicle maintenance... garage clean-out... finishing the gates... shaping little hearts...

To be honest, I don't feel an urgency to strive for an entire year focused on one inspired word - although I admire - and encourage - a few friends who are doing that... I don't feel the need to for a vision of how we'll move forward and do more in 2024.

I do feel it's time to take a fresh look at my home... clear out the proverbial cobwebs (and the real ones)... and see things and people with a new perspective. 

And to be present around here,... being a good steward of what's right in front of me.

I've been blogging here for at least 14 years. (Though I lost several years of archives because I had switched to a different platform.) 

 Those early blog posts bring back such good memories of a lighter season of life, when I was a younger, more energetic mom, with a more hopeful outlook on life.  I was more fun... more creative.

And while I probably wouldn't trade the experience and wisdom I have now for the energy I had then - I do realize that my younger kids deserve a mom who's fun and creative, and present just as much as those who are now getting closer to leaving the nest.

Somewhere along the way I started feeling like I was too tired to make homemade play doh... too busy to sit down and read books... too overwhelmed for projects that would make a mess... and too distracted to listen to endless chatter or enjoy playing outside.

So, instead of a word for the year... I have a mindset.  

I'm looking at these almost-adults in my home, and realizing how fast it really has gone by... while also looking at this "second batch" of young hearts and knowing it will go just as quickly... I'm looking at my husband I've spent 20 years with in a blink and wondering - will we be given twenty more?

So I'm going into 2024 with a mindset that each day is a gift, and I want to make it count. I want to give it - give them - my all - mostly in the small ways of being present... being happy... being a good listener.

Being me.  This is who I was made to be- and these people are who I was made to spend life with.

What a gift.

What's your mindset this year?  I'd love to hear it.