This year is off to a roaring start. We've had record high temperatures and our first snowfall... It's only January 3rd. As much as I love the holiday season, I also enjoy settling back into my routine after the bustle of the holidays has passed. Much like the jersey dairy cows that we love, I have come to realize that I too am a creature of habit. I just like the patterns of the seasons. Each season brings a different set of tasks, opportunities, and stresses, but each is enjoyable in its own right. The new year is a time for self-analysis, reflection, evaluation, planning, and goal setting. I am just getting started in that process, so I don't have any grand plans in place yet. I need to start with the "self-analysis, reflection, evaluation" part first. As I do that, I usually come up with an area of my life that I consider weak, or needing improvement. After identifying the area of life that I want to focus on improving over the next year, I choose a word. The word ideally represents the improvement that I want to make over the next year. It makes the improvement goal simple and easy to remember because it's just one word. The "word of the year" helps keep me focused on that aspect of life. Last year we were coming out of the most demanding work year I had ever experienced. We had to ramp up our ability to deliver record amounts of food to our customers that suddenly found themselves in the midst of a pandemic. Coming out of 2020 I felt like I had had my nose to the grindstone for months straight. In getting the job at hand done, I had failed to enjoy the process. I even found myself so busy that I wasn't taking time to enjoy my children or the aspects of farm life that have always been enjoyable for me. You probably see where this is going. My word for 2021 was "Enjoy". 2021 was crazy busy in its own right, but remembering my "word" helped me step away sometimes. It helped me slow down sometimes, and it helped me have fun sometimes. I've done the "word of the year" thing a few times but never has it been as impactful as it was this past year. I believe it was more impactful in 2021 because I put so much thought into what I needed coming out of 2020. So I plan to do the same type of exercise this year. I have not yet chosen my word for 2022, I'll do so after a lot of self-analysis, reflection, and evaluation. The "word" project is something I have recommended to family and friends for several years. If you have a similar process, or if you want to recreate this process for yourself, I only have one recommendation... ENJOY it.
