Word of the year
Jan. 1st, 2017 06:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
soniaLast year's word was ease. I don't think I've posted about it over this year, but I have kept it very much in mind. I wrote "Rest and" "Ease" in calligraphy across a couple of small notepad pages, and posted them on the shelf over my desk. Every so often, I read them and really think about them, rather than just looking past them as part of the background.
When I chose "ease", I was coming off of having two jobs and piano lessons and various hobbies and doing a great deal of emotional processing. This year I've had one job (my ongoing bodywork practice) plus running the ongoing singing and dance groups, plus a relationship that's working fairly well. I also re-created my website on wordpress with all ~100 articles, and self-published Presence After Trauma as a print book and just recently as an ebook. So, more time to relax, but also a sense that I should have been working on the big projects harder faster better yesterday.
Emotionally, there's a lot more ease. The tech job was a big strain. I started to write that the sexism, racism, etc. were (relatively) mild, and that doesn't feel true. I'll go with subtle. The sexim, racism, etc. were (relatively) subtle and I feel silly for complaining about them but they were still a big strain and I'm glad to be done with that job. In fact the gaslighting that says the sexism and racism were so mild I shouldn't complain was a substantial part of the strain.
Overall, there's still a sense of, who am I to deserve ease. Which is interesting to observe. Yeah, being aware of privilege is good, and this is one I'd like to distribute more widely. I think we all deserve and need times of ease to balance times of effort. Ease, as in slack, makes room for unexpected demands and events. It allows more presence, more kindness, fewer exhausted displays of temper. It gives us extra resources to help others when they need it. I want to keep ease in my life.
Personally, 2016 was a pretty good year for me. Politically, not so much! I spent the month of November in a state of physical terror, reading a lot of blog posts and hoping the electoral college would take action on the country's behalf. Which it didn't. I'm still hoping against hope for a reprieve, an intervention, a turning toward a more inclusive, rational, and functional US government. I plan to be part of that turning-toward as best I can.
The word that consistently comes for 2017 is "solace." Wikipedia says, "[P]sychological comfort given to someone who has suffered severe, upsetting loss, such as the death of a loved one. It is typically provided by expressing shared regret for that loss and highlighting the hope for positive events in the future." I have suffered a severe, upsetting loss of democracy in this country, joining those who had already suffered those losses under racism. I want to both offer and receive solace.
Like ease, solace is something I don't think I deserve but do need myself and want more people to have. It feels too vague, not active enough. At the same time, I think connection and community are the linchpins of resistance to the incoming administration, and solace helps create those.
When I chose "ease", I was coming off of having two jobs and piano lessons and various hobbies and doing a great deal of emotional processing. This year I've had one job (my ongoing bodywork practice) plus running the ongoing singing and dance groups, plus a relationship that's working fairly well. I also re-created my website on wordpress with all ~100 articles, and self-published Presence After Trauma as a print book and just recently as an ebook. So, more time to relax, but also a sense that I should have been working on the big projects harder faster better yesterday.
Emotionally, there's a lot more ease. The tech job was a big strain. I started to write that the sexism, racism, etc. were (relatively) mild, and that doesn't feel true. I'll go with subtle. The sexim, racism, etc. were (relatively) subtle and I feel silly for complaining about them but they were still a big strain and I'm glad to be done with that job. In fact the gaslighting that says the sexism and racism were so mild I shouldn't complain was a substantial part of the strain.
Overall, there's still a sense of, who am I to deserve ease. Which is interesting to observe. Yeah, being aware of privilege is good, and this is one I'd like to distribute more widely. I think we all deserve and need times of ease to balance times of effort. Ease, as in slack, makes room for unexpected demands and events. It allows more presence, more kindness, fewer exhausted displays of temper. It gives us extra resources to help others when they need it. I want to keep ease in my life.
Personally, 2016 was a pretty good year for me. Politically, not so much! I spent the month of November in a state of physical terror, reading a lot of blog posts and hoping the electoral college would take action on the country's behalf. Which it didn't. I'm still hoping against hope for a reprieve, an intervention, a turning toward a more inclusive, rational, and functional US government. I plan to be part of that turning-toward as best I can.
The word that consistently comes for 2017 is "solace." Wikipedia says, "[P]sychological comfort given to someone who has suffered severe, upsetting loss, such as the death of a loved one. It is typically provided by expressing shared regret for that loss and highlighting the hope for positive events in the future." I have suffered a severe, upsetting loss of democracy in this country, joining those who had already suffered those losses under racism. I want to both offer and receive solace.
Like ease, solace is something I don't think I deserve but do need myself and want more people to have. It feels too vague, not active enough. At the same time, I think connection and community are the linchpins of resistance to the incoming administration, and solace helps create those.
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Date: 2017-01-03 03:23 am (UTC)Welcome to Dreamwidth. It has its minor annoyances as a platform, but overall it has worked really well for me.