Personal Goals – My Word of the Year for 2016

Paula — Sun, 27 Dec 2015 10:08:33 +0000

It’s that time of year again, the time to set some personal goals. When December 31st approaches and another year has gone by, the lists start populating your twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook feeds fill up with reflection posts. That tends to cause some degree of nostalgia for the year gone by. I mean right now it feels like everyone is sharing their: Top Ten Posts of 2015 or Top Five Celebrities of 2015 and so on. Motivation Every year for the past few years here I have chosen a word to symbolize my year and my professional and personal goals for that year. It helps to motivate me to stay focused throughout the year. This time of year I like to look forward and also look back to determine whether my word held weight all year and if I did what I set out to do. I ask myself if there’s anything I might have done differently and then I also start thinking about the year ahead. Looking BACK In 2015, I chose Celebrate as my word of the year. I recall that it took me a good deal of time coming up with that one. It was almost the end of January when I decided on celebrate as a personal philosophy of how I would approach the year as it unfolded. I waffled quite a bit and thought originally that my word would be travel, but decided that travel was too dependent on other things. Schedules and money…travel depends on many other factors. I was worried that if I identified the word Travel as one of my biggest personal goals for the year that I’d in some way jinx myself. In previous years I have chosen Growth and Health as words of the year. So how did Celebrate measure up? Did I choose the right word? Prior Benchmarks Growth and Health were actually better words and more accurately defined the theme of the years gone by. In 2014, Growth defined my business and personal goals as well. We grew into a bigger home and my business grew exponentially and growth was a very positive word for the phenomenon that defined our year. 2015 – the Year Gone By When I look back on the past year of 2015 part of me thinks I chose the wrong word and clearly should have embraced the word Travel. I did Travel a lot. Purposefully, I added more travel content here on the blog. I took several media fam trips, a cruise with family and we learned to ski in Quebec at Mont Tremblant. I began to think of myself as a travel blogger and travel writer more than I had before. Cultivating What I Want Alongside of the health, technology and lifestyle content here on Thrifty Momma’s Tips, I also cultivated more travel content. But did I celebrate? Occasionally, but not as much as I should have. In fact I suspect I completely lost sight of that concept by September, if not sooner. I am not certain that I celebrated as I intended to when I grasped the word and wrote the post that I hoped would help motivate and describe my professional and personal goals for 2015. It was a great year, but I don’t think I fully understand or realized the word Celebrate yet. To the word celebrate I apologize a little because I feel like I let you down a bit. And I vow to be sure to return to that word and embrace it fully in the next decade, if not sooner. Do you have a word of the year for 2016 yet? 2016 is rapidly approaching and I’d be a liar if I said I wasn’t looking forward to the coming year with more excitement than usual. There’s something about the collection of numbers in 2016 that makes me happy. Maybe it’s just the fact that it’s an even numbered year. I feel positive about it, even before it has started, and that’s a good thing. I think outlook is often half of the battle. The Reveal As 2016 planning begins, I think this year’s word arrives right on time. So I confidently embrace the word Travel. In the last few weeks I have seen numerous travel opportunities filling my in box so the hard work attending conferences and networking this year is paying off. We will be travelling a good deal in 2016. It won’t always be possible for all of us to travel, but as I sit here in my office in Ontario trying to wrap up some posts before the holidays, I have two pending travel writing opportunities scheduled and ready to run with in 2016 and I have a family trip happening very soon as well. I’ve had to turn a couple of others down already because January is very full and I can’t really swing more than one trip a month. Do You Embrace a Word of the Year? Travel is my word of the year for 2016 and I can’t wait to share the world with my family and yours. Travel opens up new worlds and I love sharing those with my family and brining my readers along for the ride. Happy New Year to each of you. Do you have a word of the year or a resolution?

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What’s in a Word? You May Not Call Me Mommy Blogger

Paula — Thu, 05 Feb 2015 18:13:39 +0000

I apologize in advance for this small rant of mine. It is a little thing. An issue that is just nagging at the back of my brain like a itch begging for a scratch and so I clearly have to scratch it today, right now. This itch is a bit about me, but more so about business and professionalism and the spaces in which we use words to define us and label us. See right now, this itchy thing is threatening to become a full blown rash and I swear I know full well that is TMI and way more than you needed to know dear reader, but I can’t. I cannot. I really can’t ignore a moment longer. The itch started when I saw the word Mommy Bloggers this week written on a brand campaign many have seen by now and it’s distracting me from my job today. What’s in a phrase? Or a word? Or a term? Well, a lot actually. Words can build us up or tear us down. There are many words I cringe at and will not use. There are some I reframe and use as little springboards to launch into a learning moment. The R word contains some history and cruelty and I reject it. It demeans people with disabilities and differences. I wish that word had never existed. My kids know my feelings on the R word and they have a unique insight into why I don’t use that word here. In this safe space, everyone has abilities and differences and nobody should be put down or made to feel less than someone else. Together, when we hear someone use the R word as slang and we are out in public, we sometimes rephrase – “do you mean to say X?” Or we remind each other afterwards why we don’t use that word. It is mean and hurtful. There are other racially charged words we each know never to use in this house. What does any of that have to do with Mommy Bloggers as a term? Well, I think we can all agree words have meaning. They are our basic units of communication. They are also how I build stories and make a living. Words are how we tell someone No or Stop. Words can be weapons. They can be powerful or weak, meaningful, or insignificant, small bridges between other words. They are hopeful balloons in our chest radiating feelings. Alternatively sometimes words are our anchors. They are beautiful and sad, heavy and light. They are flowery sometimes when we are painting a romance and tender, we hope, when we recognize love. They are abusive too often, misused at times and even clumsy. Words are hopeful, helpful, wise and unwise. They convey accents, sometimes ancestry and sometimes social status and education. I am not judging anyone who doesn’t care about labels or words. I do. I care a lot about words. I have deep respect for bloggers. I am a blogger. But when I hear the term Mommy Blogger lately I get irritated and itchy. I tried it on a few times today and wondered why it bothers me so suddenly. I never used to really pay attention to it or care. And yet today I find myself holding the term up and turning it over in my hand like a book. If you as a blogger identify yourself as that and own the label as something you are comfortable with that is your business. But this is my take: To me, the term Mommy Bloggers is patronizing. It is used by a public relations professional or a marketing person or business person to keep women bloggers in a tidy little box. It is cutesy, a bit overly familiar and unprofessional in tone. Mommy is what I am to my kids and I fought hard to become that and they can call me Mom, Mommy, Mama, or Momma. It is their word and in their context I become that word. Mommy belongs to them. But in the context of what is a professional relationship as a writer, a marketing consultant, an editor, photographer, reviewer, influencer, chef, stylist, publisher and business person, I am not a Mommy anything. And in fact today this is my litmus test of whether this is an okay term: when was the last time you heard someone refer to Daddy bloggers? It’s Dad bloggers, or bloggers when men are concerned. I bring to writing and all things job related my experience as a Mom, but I am a writer, a marketer, a consultant, editor. You can call me Paula, you can call me journalist, writer, blogger, business person or perhaps even friend. You may address me by name. YOU may not call me mommy blogger. What are your thoughts? Is this just semantics or does the phrase mommy bloggers matter?

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Personal Goals – My Word of the Year for 2016

What’s in a Word? You May Not Call Me Mommy Blogger