Create – My Word of The Year for 2018

Every year, around this time, I think about what I want to focus on over the next 12 months and choose a “Word of The Year” that encompasses what it is I am hoping for. This practise has served me so well over the past few years: in 2015 my word was “Surrender”, which came in handy when I lost my job and relocated; in 2016 it was “Healing”, which was hard to remember when I spent most the year battling with increasing health issues – but it was still an important reminder than even the smallest step can have a healing effect; and in 2017 my word was “Courage“.

Word of the year 2017 – how did I do?

Well, first it’s important to explain how these past 12 months have been some of the hardest, most challenging, and often soul destroying ones I have ever faced. I couldn’t have picked a better word of the year, as courage was something I needed in absolute abundance. And, do you know what? I found it, I truly did.

Despite an awful year, which saw both myself and my husband unable to continue in regular employment (due to health issues), and in which my Nan died, my Grandma ended up in ICU, and 4 other members of my extended family were diagnosed with cancer, we’ve somehow survived. The stress for us in our own personal circumstances (health and financial insecurity) has been met with anxiety and concern for those around us who have been fighting their own unimaginable battles. I feel like the most highly strung person ever right now.

And yet, despite all of this, I’ve managed to go completely freelance (and work with 6 different clients this year), which I could never have imagined this time last year. So successful has this been, I have decided to focus on bringing that same entrepreneurial spirit to my blog by setting specific goals for the coming year (more on this later).

I also stepped out of my comfort zone and created a whole video series for Advent, which was incredibly daunting for someone with as little money and energy as I have. But more than anything, I feel like I have finally found the courage to be myself, to share my work with the world, and to know my worth. I’m choosing things which set my heart alight with passion, rather than trying to “fit in” with what I think the world expects of me. And in doing so, I have rediscovered the power of creating for the sheer joy of it.

Which leads me beautifully to my chosen word of the year for 2018 – Create!

Create – my word of the year for 2018 – what does that mean?

When I first chose this word for 2018, I initially thought it would simply relate to my writing. Back in October, when I first decided to close down Spirit Kid Network (another courageous decision!) and bring everything here to The Family Patch, I wasn’t quite sure how to package everything under one roof (so to speak). It wasn’t until Tim suggested the tagline, “Feeding the Creative Spirit” that it truly clicked for me. That’s what I am – I am a creator.

I use the word creator (as opposed to creative) for a specific reason. When I think of a creative, it brings to my mind writers, artists, crafters, people who create works of art in their own field. And that is something I do – I can create whole worlds with my words, and I love it. But I also create a world around me by the choices I make and the things that I do – in essence, I create the life that I live and experience. We all do.

This year has taught me that more than anything else – when we’re hit with challenges in life, we all experience them in different ways based on who we are and what we do in response to such challenges. We even create different experiences for ourselves based on the unique circumstances we face – for instance, my health is really poor right now because I can’t do the things that I used to do to protect myself from burn out (e.g. getting plenty of sleep, taking time off at the weekends etc). Those simply aren’t options for me at the moment, and until I learn to create new ways of protecting my health, it will suffer. But I have hope that by creating new experiences, I can begin to heal. I’ll never be “cured” of my health issues, but I know I can live well with them, because I’ve done it before. And that’s why I want to focus on creating this year.

18 ways i want to create a new experience for myself in 2018

Because it can be very easy to fall into the trap of keeping things very vague with a word of the year, I decided to write out a list of 18 ways I can create a new experience for myself in 2018. I’ve split them into 2 categories – blog/business (work) and lifestyle (home), because we all need a bit of work/life balance!

blog/business

1. Write 50 Blog Posts

I know that this sounds like a lot – but actually it’s just short of one post per week, which is nothing compared to what many bloggers create. I know I can do this, as The Family Patch is will have been going for 8 years in April and I’ve got 369 posts on here (that’s an average of just over 46 posts per year). So why set it as a goal, then? Well, in the past year 26 of the 45 posts published were added as part of my Advent series – so that means I wrote fewer than 20 posts during the first 11 months of the year! So regular content is a big goal for me this year!

2. Focus on Seasonal Content

Not only do I want to write more posts, I want to make sure that they are more seasonally appropriate. I have loved creating an Advent series, and I want to make sure that throughout 2018 I look ahead to holidays and awareness days and take part in them by both creating my own content and helping to share the content of others.

3. Produce 12 Videos for YouTube

Again, I loved creating videos for my Advent series (as exhausting as it was to do a series of 26 videos!) and so I would love to create some more video content through the year. 12 videos works out as one per month, and will work beautifully with my desire to create more seasonal content.

4. Publish 10 Chapters for The Brethren

I already have original drafts of more than 10 chapters of my Young Adult novel, but to be honest they all need a lot of reworking. I really want to make some headway with this during 2018 and would love to write far more than 10 chapters. But I’m also very aware that goals need to be both specific and achievable, and 10 chapters feels like it is both of those things.

5. Launch 1 Saleable Item

As my hope for this year is to begin turning my blog into a business, I need to start thinking of how I can make that work. One way would be producing an eBook that I could sell via the blog. At present I have a couple of ideas, and shall explore both of them over the coming weeks to work out which is more achievable, and will work on that. Not only will I be creating content with this goal, I’ll also be starting to create more income. So this is a 2-for-1 type goal!

6. Work with 5 Brands

So this is the big one for me – I would love to be able to create some income by working with brands here at The Family Patch. I’ve done the odd review in return for products in the past, but have never made any money through my blog itself (that has always been achieved via freelance copywriting or VA work elsewhere). The idea has always terrified me somewhat, but having worked with clients this past year I suddenly realised I was underselling myself and what I can offer here at The Family Patch too. So I’m going to try and build up working relationships with PRs and Brands this year, in the hope of working on 5 campaigns through the year.

7. Improve My SEO

I am aware that the best way to increase my chances of working with PRs and Brands is to have a decent sized, well-engaged audience. I have the engaged part pretty well sorted out – my audience may be small, but it is a wonderful one. However it is very small compared to a lot of other bloggers, and some of that could be rectified by sorting out the SEO on my site, to help others who are interested in what I share here at The Family Patch find us via search engines.

The Family Patch has been going since 2010 – that’s a lot of posts with very little SEO (which I knew nothing about until recent years). Even my latest posts need a bit of a tune up. So that is a big goal for me this year.

8. Develop a Pinterest Strategy

Another way to increase interested traffic is to use Pinterest, which works like a search engine. I have known this for many years, and yet my Pinterest account still looks like a personal pin board. So another very practical aim for this year is to create and implement a proper strategy for Pinterest.

9. Leave More Blog Comments

Finally, as I am wanting to get back to the heart of blogging by producing more content, I want to make sure I am reading lots of content too. I have found that in recent years I have lost so much time to social media and, in turn, missed out on some amazing posts by some brilliant bloggers. One of the things I want to focus on this year is the blog content, rather than the social media updates. So I shall be adding lots of blogs to my Feedly and reading and commenting on as many posts as I can throughout the year.

Lifestyle

10. Read 10 Books

There are some people who do an amazing 52 Books in a Year Challenge, which I am in awe of. Honestly, even at the height of my reading days (when I was a teenager) I don’t think I read quite that many books in a year! But just because I can’t read 52 books, doesn’t mean I don’t want to challenge myself to read more than I have this year… and this year has been shocking! So I’ve set myself the goal of reading at least 10 books this year. I received almost that many from my parents for Christmas, so I have a good stash to work through….

11. Work Through The New Testament Together

Another thing I want to make time for, is reading the Bible regularly. I go through phases of reading some each day followed by phases of not reading it at all. I have a Daily Bible* which I tried to use to get through the Old Testament this year, but honestly I got lost in the middle of it and kinda gave up! This year, Tim and I would really like to work our way through the New Testament together, not just so that we can finally read the bits we’ve always seemed to skip over, but also so that we can discuss how we feel about it and how it relates to our lives now in a way that makes faith feel more a part of our everyday lives again.

12. Practise Yoga 3 Times Per Week

Both Tim and I would love to be more active, but our health makes things so difficult at times. However doing some yoga 3 times per week feels manageable. There are some amazing yoga videos on YouTube, some aimed specifically at people like ourselves with limited energy and flexibility. So we’re going to work through some gentle, regular practise in the hope that it really begins to make a difference.

13. Make Time For The Cosmic Kids Yoga Course

Following on nicely from this is the Cosmic Kids Yoga course I signed up for earlier this year. I am so excited about this, as Little Man loves the Cosmic Kids adventures and I want to be able to understand more about why they work and how I can integrate that into our yoga practice at home. Little Man often asks if he can join in with my yoga practice, but he finds the videos I watch too boring. I, on the other hand, find the Cosmic Kids ones too energetic to join in with some days. So I’m hoping to learn enough to merge the two together somehow, so Little Man can join in our weekly practice too.

14. Go Swimming Once Per Month

Swimming is another activity that Tim and I both know would be good for us. And yet, we haven’t managed to make it swimming yet, despite saying we’d do so for at least 3 months now! So starting in January we want to make sure we go at least once per month.

15. Use Duolingo Daily

Over the past few weeks I have really fallen in love with the DuoLingo app for language practise. I am a linguist at heart (my degree is in German and Russian) and I am amazed at just how many amazing apps there are these days to help you learn and master languages in a far more immersive way than flashcards and grammar books! Already I feel my confident growing and I feel like daily practise throughout 2018 will help me explore worlds I have long forgotten, worlds which inspire and encourage me. Words are my friends, remember, so languages are as much a part of my creative spirit as anything else!

16. Spend More Time With Family and Friends

This is something we have really struggled with over the past year or so, as health issues have taken a real toll. I cannot count the number of times we have had to cancel plans (or even avoid making them in the first place) due to being too poorly to do things. This year I want to try and change that, by inviting family round for dinner, visiting friends who we don’t get to see on a regular basis, or even simply writing to or calling those we cannot see in person.

17. Have a Major Declutter

This one is all about creating space and order within our home. I am so fed up of clutter that I simply don’t know what to do with. A dear friend recently helped me sort out my kitchen cupboards, and it was so cathartic. I also spent a few days before Christmas tidying our bedrooms, and it made me realise that the only way to truly create space and order in our lives is to have a major declutter. I am reminded of how my Lent practise of giving away an item of clothing each day helped to really focus my mind on what I actually needed and what was surplus to my needs. As challenging as it was to give away 40 items of clothing (which made up almost half my wardrobe) it was actually truly uplifting to simplify my wardrobe. So I want to do the same thing throughout our house.

We’re actually hoping to move into a smaller place this year as well, so this has a very practical goal too – we cannot possibly take all of the clutter we have with us to another home. So instead of rushing to have a clear out when we move, I want to slowly do it over a few weeks or months.

18. Attend Young Spirits

My friend set up this wonderful pre-church group, which allows children and those new to the faith to explore that week’s readings in a fun and informative way before the service begins. We have yet to make a single session, as health issues have kept us at home, but I really want to try and make it to some of the sessions during 2018. It will be a wonderful way of exploring our faith from a slightly different perspective, creating new experiences for us to share together.

Phew – that’s quite a list, isn’t it? And yet, I feel like it is all perfect for me as I head into 2018. you may have read through that list and wonder how it all relates to my word of the year… but every single one of them is helping me to create a better life for myself. Some, like those in the blog/business section are more self-explanatory than others. But even swimming and yoga help me to create better health, and spending time with family and friends helps me to create more community and happiness. After several years of feeling like my life was spiralling out of control, I am so excited to have so many ways in which I can create little bits of change that will hopefully have a big impact on my life.

I’d love to know whether you choose a word for the year or set goals for yourself. If you do, please feel free to share them in the comments 🙂

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*Please Note: the link to the NRSV Daily Bible is an affiliate link. If you use that link and then purchase an item from Amazon, I will receive a small referral fee. This helps me to keep running The Family Patch. For more information on how I use affiliate links, please read my disclosure policy.

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I have joined in with both the #ShareYourYear and My Blogging Goals linkies with this post, to find out how other bloggers are reflecting on 2017 and preparing for 2018. Do go and check them out if you’re looking for a bit of inspiration!

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