My word of the year

You know Layla over at The Lettered Cottage? You may have noticed I obsess from time to time. She has some great ideas, like coming up with a word to inspire and motivate yourself throughout the year. She's having a word of the year link party Monday, January 16th. You should check it out. Don't worry. I'll remind you.

I'd already been thinking about this for a week or so. When you have a life coach you have conversations about where you want to be in your life a year from now and words to guide your efforts. It makes you realize things. It makes you think, "I don't want my life to be slightly better; I want it to ROCK OUT."

And then you realize that to make your life rock out you actually have to do something to make that change happen. Not exactly earth shattering, but a major breakthrough on an emotional level. At least for me. The kind of breakthrough that makes you write in your coaching notebook every day for a week.

How am I going to make my life rock out? I'm going to focus on owning the use of my time.

Part of owning my time is structuring it so that I get to work on all the different projects I want to and do all the things that go into a life that rocks out. Here's my list:
 

• My blog & working on creating a business - brainstorming post ideas, improving the layout, taking better photos, talking to a couple of very important people about how me might be able to work together
• Academic work - submitting the articles I planned from my dissertation for publication, creating a course or two
• Baby preparations - financial planning, getting the nursery ready, thinking about the shower
• Home projects and maintenance - finishing up projects around the house, making new stuff and decorating, gardening, keeping it clean
• Austin time - making time to spend my babe. You can't work all the time.
• Amber stuff - reading books I've wanted to read for a while, learning more German, becoming a master cheese maker

Obviously these aren't mutually exclusive uses of time. Some of them have some overlap, but I like the idea of splitting them up so I can think of it as focusing my attention on one of them every night after dinner. That way I don't feel overwhelmed by trying to think about everything at the same time and I feel like get to do a variety of things. Don't be surprised if you notice my posts seem to fall under one of these categories in the near future. Maybe I'll even tag them that way.

So what's my word?

Rocking out.

But that's two words. Why not just use TIME?

Because when you rock out you don't have to follow other people's rules about things like how many words can be in a word.

UPDATE: I found this shirt which I think may replace my skull shirt with the hole as my go-to T-shirt. Too bad it's out of stock. And doesn't come in maternity. Hmmm.