How a Fanfiction Story Gave Me My Word of the Year
I discovered my word of the year accidentally. In thinking about how I want to spend my limited time this year, I knew I wanted to simplify my goals and list of things to accomplish.
I had considered and prayed about several words, but nothing stuck, until, of all things, I was crafting a fanfiction story about an alternate universe relationship pairing where the characters gave themselves a second shot at love, fatherhood, and belonging, amidst a whole lot tragedy and brokenness.
It was a complete switch from the ship I’ve shipped half my life, but after watching a later season of the show and seeing the dynamics of new characters in contrast to the original, I knew I had to write this story. Even though it’s just head-canon, it had the potential to breathe life back into the characters.
In a word: Redeeming.
Therefore, I have a whopping two goals this year:
- Write redeeming stories.
- Speak redeeming words.
It’s what I need. It’s what my family needs. It’s what my city needs. It’s what our whole world needs. We need redemption.
I do have a list of things to accomplish this year, but now everything will run through this filter. Does it give life?
I took a good look at my personality and my season of life, in order to pare down and craft a few other objectives for the year.
- To cultivate a creative practice
- To build a body of completed work
- To build momentum by investing my time in creating things that give near-immediate feedback.
- To focus on completing one thing at a time.
My specific projects for the year are broken down by month. I’ve tried the quarterly thing, but in this season of life, I just need to focus on smaller increments. So I picked just one or two big projects each month that I can actually complete in that short time frame. I want to be able to check things off and battle my distraction tendencies.
So here’s to 2021, a year of redeeming words and stories, creating momentum, and putting things out there.
