On Living with Intent
The other week, I was walking around the city on the eve before patios re-opened in Toronto and there was an emptiness ringing in the air — an anticipatory breath before a months-long release the next day. I felt a small thrill (to be honest, a big thrill) in knowing the next day it would be bustling — our city had been missing its energy.
I recently read An Ordinary Age by Rainesford Stauffer. She writes that during the pandemic, “carefully outlined plans to participate in organized fun disappeared.” I have certainly been missing that “organized fun” element and have been loving having at least some semblance of it back.
It also got warm in Toronto recently… which is both good news and bad news for me. The warmth in the air and the refreshing promise of some normalcy was great, but it also got me a bit off track. I’m a sucker for the outdoors and love to have plans with friends, but it’s definitely gotten in the way of my writing these past couple weeks. I’m often a “more is more” kind of person when it comes to plans, but I will admit it feels luxurious to not have had as much going on this week. I’ve cut out time to do what I want and need for myself — to read, to write, to just go out and do things on my own.
Case in point above, but I often use books as jumping off points for my writing. It makes sense, then, that with having gotten back into organized fun in a bigger way, I’m reading less… which also means I’m writing less, as there’s less for my brain to mull over and dissect and actually want to write about. I’ve still been actively writing and creating, but until now, I didn’t have something I wanted to share.
I have long been an intentional, mindful person, but have never really liked New Year’s resolutions. I prefer the more general idea of picking a Word of the Year to help guide my next 365 days. I started this practice a couple years ago, in 2019. The year prior, a long-term relationship I’d been in ended and I found myself feeling quite lost after so many years in that partnership — it naturally had become a part of my identity and I was a bit confused without it. In an attempt to work on re-finding myself, I chose to focus on DIRECTION the following year. This took me in and out of new dating storylines, to Italy and Germany, into new opportunities, and brought me the gift of a year so full of happiness, there was no way of knowing a global pandemic was just around the corner.
After finding some direction and working hard on getting back to my “self”, I knew what I needed to focus on for the next year was ACTION — I had found a new path and put myself back onto it, and now it was time to set out on that path. It doesn’t go unnoticed that my year of action was ironically 2020, a year essentially filled with so much inaction. I had such an amazing year of growth in spite of it all and one of the biggest things I learned is that taking action is not the same thing as making progress — action = motion; progress = results. I think in the first half of the year, I was so focused on taking action that I never really made much real progress — meaning, nothing changed as a result of something I myself changed. Don’t get me wrong, trying is always better than not trying. But I didn’t want to just settle for a try — I was thirsty for progress; I was thirsty for results. I could present the flimsy excuse of “look, I tried” — but did I actually do anything? Did I actually get anything done? In the second half of the year, I put myself into high-gear and made things happen — to name a few, I focused more on my bookstagram account, my best friend and I started a podcast that had until then been all talk, I left a job and took a new one.
Ending off last year, I was at a point where I’d taken action and had made the changes I wanted to in my life. Now, I was ready to come back to working on myself again. For 2021, the word DISCOVER called to me — more than anything, I feel like this year is about self-discovery for me.
Every Monday, I choose a Word of the Week for myself — adapted from choosing a Word of the Year, I’ve enjoyed the practice of making it a bit more granular and even more intentional, to guide me through my days.
Often, there is a word calling to me — something that I know I want or need to focus on in the coming week. But other weeks, when I’m struggling to think of a word, I focus instead on asking myself this question: How do I want to feel this week?
I remember the week of my birthday, I was thinking about how I wanted to feel that week — I wanted to feel joyful, I wanted to feel light, I wanted to feel BLISS. Sometimes this shift of thinking about how I want to feel brings a word into the forefront for me.
This week, I’m been focusing on ROUTINE. After a (very, very fun) week of potentially one too many plans, I am already feeling so much more grounded after resettling back into some of my tried and true routines — the things that make me “me”. This includes things like earlier mornings, solo walks, pilates and yoga, reading and writing — simply, just more time to myself. I think there’s such value in knowing yourself well and knowing what the things you value are — those things that make you “you”.
Last week, I could see myself starting to get anxious, and I don’t typically have anxious tendencies. I was aware that that feeling wasn’t “me” — I didn’t like the way it felt and wanted to do something to change that. I’m proud that I was able to recognize that in myself and that I had the desire to change it.
I was telling a friend this past week that writing is magic, but it isn’t always magic. I never want to feel like I’m forcing myself to write or create or share, so I’m OK with waiting until that magical spark ignites in me — I think then my writing comes from a genuine, honest, raw place and that’s where I like to write from vs. forcing anything and coming off as inauthentic.
I find it very challenging to stay indoors when it’s nice out and foresee this continuing to be a bit of a challenge for my writing this summer. In On Writing, Stephen King writes that, “You learn best by reading and writing a lot, and the most valuable lessons of all are the ones you teach yourself.” It’s not a new realization, but I know that reading is something that makes me “me” and I know I need to bring it back into my life as a larger focal point — I know I am the best version of myself when I dedicate more time to reading and it also directly fuels my creativity.
I mentioned earlier that action and progress are not the same thing. But an added benefit of focusing on progress as the goal, is that progress is not the same thing as perfection — you don’t need to get it “right” every single time, just make sure you are putting in an amount of effort that makes you proud and leaves you feeling your best.
And if you find yourself lacking focus or direction in your days, I encourage you to adopt the practice of choosing a Word of the Week — it brings me back to living with intent and staying true to myself.