by Kate
Welcome back to Spend Your Values! After a fall hiatus, we are back to our regularly scheduled weekly posting on faith, finances, spending, thoughtful living, and values. Let us know if you'd like to see articles on any particular topic! This year we'll be talking more about lifestyle choices and financial strategies, as well as taking a swing at some theological questions (should Christians be rich?) and learning more about creative ways to combine our faith and finances.
We begin again with my annual "word-of-the-year" post, in which I choose a word to focus on for the year.
In 2017, my word was commit. I committed super hard, which was a great learning experience, but resulted (predictably) in over-work. In 2018, my word was contemplate. This was ostensibly a way to slow down and think about what I really wanted and needed to be doing. Ironically, I was busier than ever, but the busy-ness seemed to assist my thinking. After a year of contemplating I actually feel like I know what I want to say "no" and "yes" to. So my 2019 word is "priorities."
However, I'm really not loving this word. It's vague, over-used, and ever so slightly formal. I wanted my word to just be "NO," but that didn't quite fit because I also want to say "yes" to things. I also wanted my word to be "less," to signal a shift to less clutter, less activities, less stress, and less busy. But that also frames things in the negative and doesn't allow room for strategic additions or changes. So I landed on "priorities." It's funny that in a blog all about values I still need to work at identifying and acknowledging my own priorities.
So what do I want to prioritize this year? Time and relationships. Broad categories much? Yep. Because I'm not really sure what prioritizing these two things will look like exactly. I know I want to work on creating a larger margin of "free" time so I can teach my brain to slow down, and I want to prioritize all the people and put energy and time in to the people we say are important. (Important introvert note - I will not prioritize literally ALL the people. That's terrifying.)
I'm a little nervous about deliberately trying to not be busy and I'm a little scared of what I might find out about myself when I slow down. But it's a new year and time to re-think values and time and energy and expectations and plans. What are your new-for-2019 plans? I would love to hear your words-of-the-year or your values for 2019!
The power of the small amount.