One Word for 2017

Happy New Year, everyone! I hope everyone is recovering nicely from their late night festivities!

While nothing has really changed from last night to this morning, there is still a new calendar and the idea of a fresh start. What better way to ring in the new year with the word I have chosen as my theme for 2017.

Life is hard. Last year proved that to so many of us as we continue to struggle with our feelings about the election results and ongoing horror story that is our future government. We can let life get us down and defeat us or we can let its challenges motivate us. For 2017, I choose to let the challenges motivate me. I want to persevere.

My biggest failure in 2016 was giving up on my goals. Life got busy, and the focus on my personal well-being disappeared. I made no goals professionally. I made no blogging goals. I was discouraged and angry by the election, both before and after, and I let that influence how I treated others. Life proved to be difficult, and I caved under its pressures.

This is not who I want to be. When I envision myself, I see someone who is strong mentally, physically, and emotionally. I see someone who succeeds in every goal she sets for herself. I see someone who knows what she wants and will do everything she get it. I see a formidable woman who knows her audience, who can argue with the best of them, who takes no shit from anyone, who knows her own mind, and who has a softer side she shows to her loved ones IRL and online.

While this may not be 100 percent achievable, one of the things I forgot in 2016 is the fact that we should never stop trying to achieve the unachievable. When we stop trying, we fail. However, when we persevere, we grow, and I so desperately need to grow.

2017 is not going to be an easy year. The next president and his cabinet will bring unknown issues with them upon his inauguration, and I am firmly convinced there will be plenty of fights ahead to preserve basic human rights.We are all going to have to persevere to get through the next four years.

My son graduates high school and will go off to college. I will have to deal with the myriad emotions that such a life-changing event means for all of us. My daughter will enter eighth grade; on top of that, certain life-changing events among friends will require her to have to make some tough decisions about her passions. I will have to be there to support them both.

I am not getting any younger and while I am perfectly fine with my appearance, I know that I am not healthy. I am dreadfully overweight, unhappy in my work life, anxious almost all the time, quick to anger and slow to relax. Who I am now is not who I want to be, not who I envision myself to be. It is time to change that. The journey is going to be long, but if I want to merge my vision with my actuality, I will have to stick with it in the good times and bad.

Life is hard, but that does not mean we have to give up when things get tough. It is time to persevere.