Reverb#10 - Days One & Two

I'm late to Reverb#10, but since December for me is going to be about getting this blog off the ground - getting me some motivation to get finished with the Foster Care process, I'm jumping into the Reverb#10 spririt.

December 1 One Word.
Encapsulate the year 2010 in one word. Explain why you’re choosing that word. Now, imagine it’s one year from today, what would you like the word to be that captures 2011 for you?
(Author: Gwen Bell)

December 2 Writing.
What do you do each day that doesn’t contribute to your writing — and can you eliminate it?
(Author: Leo Babauta)

Chaos

So much was happening this year. Not in terms of big life milestones sort of things, but I just felt busy all the time. I wouldn't say I overextended myself because I love what I was able to accomplish this year in a lot of places. But, I do feel like I ALWAYS had something going on.

One of the things I continue to think about as we work through the FC process is that I have A LOT of hobbies, many of them keep me busy on weeknights/weekends and sometimes away from the house for days. When we take Foster kids into our home, I know I'm going to have to set many of these things. I think partly with that idea in mind, I took on a lot of hobby related responsibilities (more knitting classes, more writing and involvement in online communities) that I might not be able to sustain later.

When I add my own hobby excess to the fact that my day job underwent some turmoil in the last quarter of the year (and is still going through it), that's a lot of stuff to keep on my mind.

For 2011, I want success, completion, forward-momentum, happiness and stability. I don't know that I can come up with one word for 2011 to focus on right now, but I think all those ideas can be summed for me right now by the word: Calm. I want to take what I enjoyed about 2010 and put some calmness behind it, some peace.

Focus

See the answer to question 1 and the answer will be very similar for this question. I haven't had the focus this year to do anything like I wanted to. Most of that is because of the Chaos I sort of created by giving myself so many projects.

I work best with a half-crazed mentality most of the time - meaning that I like a little chaos, a little pressure (a deadline) to help me get things done. But to echo my earlier comments, I need a little stability to go along with all of my half-baked projects. I need to find the right kind of motivators to keep me on the right track.

My husband is a great asset in this regard, but ending up on our 4th FC worker by this December has slowed the motivation down for both of us on the whole process. I think we've both used the changes as an opportunity to write, to create, to take on new projects. It's actually been a pretty productive year for us both creatively. Though for 2011, I would like us both to work on completion and follow-though for all our projects.