One Word

I am going to attempt to blog once a day for the rest of the year.

With the help of some fellow bloggers, I came across Resound '11, which is a collection of writing prompts to reflect on this past year and to ready myself for the coming year. Let's see if this works. I haven't used any writing prompts since I started this blog in January, so this should be interesting.



What is one word to describe your 2011? Why does that word sum up your year?

One word? Really? You must not know me very well. The whole reason I started blogging was because I felt confined by twitter's 140 character limit and Facebook's lack of decent outlets for everything I have to say. But, okay, I'll try to sum up my entire year in one word.

Change.

No, that won't work. I don't feel like I've made many changes in my life this year. I have been mentally preparing myself for change, but those changes haven't happened yet.

Transfigure.

Yeah, that's more like it. That sounds more like what my year has been like. I ended last year in such a funk. I was unhappy. I was turning into a hermit. I was underemployed. I was unhappy. But I told myself that 2011 was going to be different. I was going to be better. I was going to do better. I was going to make a conscious effort to fix those things in my life that were bringing me down. And although I cannot see any physical changes in my life, I have been transfiguring my life. Things are transforming. Slowly. And a slow transformation is better than no transformation at all.

Sometimes I feel like I am behind the curve a bit. Sometimes I think I'm too old for a transformation. Sometimes I look at where my dad was at my age and think he had it all figured out year ago. He was a husband and a father at twenty. He had a full-time job that paid all the bills for a wife and two children when he was my age. He was almost done paying off his mortgage by the time he was my age. Maybe I should just find a job that pays well just so I can be financially stable. Maybe I should give up all these dreams of getting my PhD and teaching at a university and just concentrate on making money and buying a house. Living in the same town for the rest of my life will be okay, right?

Wrong.

I can't do that. I will hate myself and I working a job that just pays the bills will slowly kill me. I can't do that to myself. I would rather have dreams that I try to accomplish and can't than to have dreams that just sit there and wither because I never tried to reach them.

This year has been all about transfiguring. I may still be in the beginning stages, but I feel as though change is coming. Any time now things will begin to be altered. I will start to see physical changes. And once I see the changes I am trying to make in my life, everyone around me will see those changes as well.