Word of the Year: Warmth
Dec. 30th, 2019 12:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
soniaMy word of the year this year was warmth. It was in the background for 6 months, but it's something I want and think about and appreciate anyway. Overall I have the sense that I have more warmth in my life than I did a year ago.
On a physical level, my bedroom doesn't have a furnace vent, and it's right under the roof with little insulation. When it's below 40F at night, I've been running the electric heater in there for a couple of hours and then turning it off when I go to bed. It's nice to be warm to start rather than shivering until the sheets warm up. I want to do my part to save energy and save the planet, and at the same time I want a baseline of comfort.
It makes more of a difference than I expected to stop hanging out with a couple of people who had an undercurrent of contempt toward me, rather than warmth. Remove the ice pack, and it's easier to feel warm. I thought I could (or was supposed to) just not take in the contempt.
I had a new friend over the spring and summer who initially reached out to me. We had some good conversations and fun local adventures. Someone else reached out recently. We connected at a class in the summer, but I hadn't heard from her so I had let it go. It's great to have new connections come my way.
I was warmly invited and welcomed into the choir I joined recently. It's a ton of work and I feel like my head is barely above water, and at the same time it's great to have that new energy moving in my life.
Not directly about warmth, but good things this year: I've had more energy in the second half of the year, I think because I'm eating rice and quinoa again rather than avoiding all grains. It's wonderful not to feel like I'm dragging myself through my life. I also have somewhat less chronic pain and fewer migraines. Maybe the Migrelief is helping. Thanks again,jesse_the_k! I've generally felt calmer and less anxious lately too.
My forties were rough in many ways. I'm tentatively hopeful that my fifties will be easier, at least on a personal level. Politically the world appears to be continuing to go to hell.
For next year's word, I'm thinking of kindness. Like warmth, it's something I want and think about all the time. I had to check whether I had already picked it for some past year, because it feels like it has been a focus all along. In some ways it feels like a continuation of warmth, which would be fine with me! I'll have to think about how they differ and support each other.
As I think about it a bit, kindness is more about how I choose to behave (or how others behave toward me), and warmth is about how I feel toward the other person. I can choose to be kind even if I don't feel warm toward someone.
There's a piece here about deserving that I also want to sit with over the year. Do I always have to be kind to deserve kindness? When am I off the hook to be kind to someone else? When are people off the hook to be kind to me? How does anger fit in? And people taking advantage?
The Act of Kindness: A Challenge for Direct Support Professionals by Dave Hingsburger.
On a physical level, my bedroom doesn't have a furnace vent, and it's right under the roof with little insulation. When it's below 40F at night, I've been running the electric heater in there for a couple of hours and then turning it off when I go to bed. It's nice to be warm to start rather than shivering until the sheets warm up. I want to do my part to save energy and save the planet, and at the same time I want a baseline of comfort.
It makes more of a difference than I expected to stop hanging out with a couple of people who had an undercurrent of contempt toward me, rather than warmth. Remove the ice pack, and it's easier to feel warm. I thought I could (or was supposed to) just not take in the contempt.
I had a new friend over the spring and summer who initially reached out to me. We had some good conversations and fun local adventures. Someone else reached out recently. We connected at a class in the summer, but I hadn't heard from her so I had let it go. It's great to have new connections come my way.
I was warmly invited and welcomed into the choir I joined recently. It's a ton of work and I feel like my head is barely above water, and at the same time it's great to have that new energy moving in my life.
Not directly about warmth, but good things this year: I've had more energy in the second half of the year, I think because I'm eating rice and quinoa again rather than avoiding all grains. It's wonderful not to feel like I'm dragging myself through my life. I also have somewhat less chronic pain and fewer migraines. Maybe the Migrelief is helping. Thanks again,
jesse_the_k! I've generally felt calmer and less anxious lately too.My forties were rough in many ways. I'm tentatively hopeful that my fifties will be easier, at least on a personal level. Politically the world appears to be continuing to go to hell.
For next year's word, I'm thinking of kindness. Like warmth, it's something I want and think about all the time. I had to check whether I had already picked it for some past year, because it feels like it has been a focus all along. In some ways it feels like a continuation of warmth, which would be fine with me! I'll have to think about how they differ and support each other.
As I think about it a bit, kindness is more about how I choose to behave (or how others behave toward me), and warmth is about how I feel toward the other person. I can choose to be kind even if I don't feel warm toward someone.
There's a piece here about deserving that I also want to sit with over the year. Do I always have to be kind to deserve kindness? When am I off the hook to be kind to someone else? When are people off the hook to be kind to me? How does anger fit in? And people taking advantage?
The Act of Kindness: A Challenge for Direct Support Professionals by Dave Hingsburger.
