Word for 2022 - Enough

Well hello strangers.

My apologies. I have zero excuses as to my silence. I’ve been busy, I’ve been surviving, I’ve been dancing that delicate balance of just “living” these past few days (…months …years)

I really did have some grand intentions to get back on here regularly this summer, but I found I just can’t do it all. I can’t do all the things, so I continued to just let the blog go for a while. And I may continue to let it be for a long time forward, perhaps forever… I don’t honestly know. However, I do love to write, so I’m going to hope that someday I can regularly find my way back here again.

So what brings me here today… Well, in just a few short days is the start of a brand new year. 2021 is nearly over and 2022 is already knocking. And I am in full on survival mode yet from 2020 if I’m totally honest, and as I sit here telling myself I need to start looking ahead, start figuring out my new goals and hopes and plans for 2022, I just find my heart hurting, and my soul shrinking inward even farther than it already is hiding.

I don’t wanna. I do not want to do anything.

I want to stop all the things. I don’t want to work, I don’t want to workout, I don’t want to start or stop or continue anything. I don’t want to run, or walk, or bike, or elliptical, or row, or hit play, or pick up one single weight. I don’t want to cook, or bake, or clean, or help anyone do anything. I don’t even want to read, or write, or scrapbooking at this current moment.

I want to crawl in bed, in the dark, with the electric blanket turned up high, and sleep and lay tucked far far away under all the safety of my blankies, hidden in my very own bedroom..­. Zero responsibilities, zero cares, zero talking, zero doings of anything.

Yup, this is what my current weary mind is whispering to me, taunting me, tantalizing me, tempting me… pulling me inward and begging me to give in to the silence and stillness it so desperately thinks I need. Some of it is truth, but lots of it is the lie of depression and anxiety.

But you know what… in my current forty-six years of living, I also know that if and when I do finally give in, or give out, and comply with the “nothing” my mind is telling me to grant myself, that I know that that same mind won’t allow me to simply just climb in and “be.” I may be able to give my body the rest it needs, but my mind however, is always another story. Again, more of the intricate lacing in my mind that’s woven and braided amid sanity and depression and anxiety.

I know as I would lay there trying to obey the weary whines of my every exhausted muscle and bone, trying to give myself the rest and grace I know it needs, my mind … well my mind will continue to have a mind of it’s own. And I know the longer I would lay, and the longer I would attempt to do nothing but rest and recoup, the louder my mind will start its next set of whispers and lies… the ones telling me that I’m not enough.

That I’m not busy enough, thin enough, strong enough, smart enough, rich enough, bold enough, quiet enough… Not a good enough wife, mom, soon-to-be grandma, daughter, sister, employee, friend, stranger… Get up girl! Do more! Be more! Get more!

LORD HAVE FREAKING MERCY ALREADY!

I’ve spent nearly my entire life in battle with this. I know it merely is what it is, and time and time again I know I need to figure out how to just get over it… and I obviously have not been able to do a very good job at it.

So, as I look to 2022 and wonder – Well, what should I all attempt to do / reach / overcome THIS year?? I just can’t help but want to just attempt to actually do nothing at all. Or at least go in with zero expectations of anything.

No milage goal. No weight goal. No preset races and training schedules. No book reading list. No budget expectations (but not meaning I’m allowing myself to be free to spend and spend – no, just wanting zero expectations on my attempt to NOT spend in my incessant drive to try to save and to justify overworking.).

No goals, no resolutions, no expectations.
Simply allowing whatever to just be enough.

Enough. Such an incredibly power packed word that carries so much weight. Oh that one word really can carry the entire weight of the world inside it can’t it? Enough.

I believe this is the word I will assign to the year 2022. Enough. Although I really have no idea how to simply allow myself (or anyone else if I’m honest) to simply be … enough …. But I don’t think I’m going to even allow myself any more time of contemplation over it right now.

Looking back, some of my recent word of the years have been:
2017 = Less
2018 = Contentment
2019 = Just Be
2020 = Focus
2021 = there was no word, so by default it was basically Survival
2022 = Enough.

And for now, that is going to just be enough.

I shall settle on this word, and settle on the agreement with myself of setting zero anything for myself in 2022, attempting to allow myself to somehow simply be “enough” exactly as I already am.

Maybe I'll figure out how to finally just be enough to me, myself, and I over this next twelve months, and maybe I won't. But I'm going to attempt to allow myself to go into 2022 free and clear of all the things.   (Easier said than do, oh yes I surely know!) Hopefully I'll surprise myself by what I'll all get done and figured out... then again, maybe I honestly won't do a darn single thing and I'll find myself sitting in this exact same place in a year.

Maybe I'll be rested and ready to move mountains in 2023, maybe I'll still be the weary hot mess I've been in, I honestly just don't know. But, I'm going to allow myself to be ok with not knowing and not even trying to figure out how to figure it out right now.

Enough. As I am... where I am... how I am... right now. Enough

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