Word for the Year – Becky Levine

2025 Word for the Year – Path

Posted on 31 Dec 202431 Dec 2024 by beckylevine

My word for 2025 is Path.

I retired just over two years ago, and I feel like I’ve gotten to a place where my retirement “rhythm” is working for me. I’m basically doing what I’ve wanted to do my whole life–writing creatively–what I’ve had to push at least a bit to the side while I did paying-job writing. Obviously, some days/weeks are more focused & productive than others, but overall I feel like I’m keeping stories at the top of my priority list.

But I’ve also reached one of those life stages where other people around me are experiencing their own shifts and transitions. These are people I love, people I want to support, people whose rhythms I have absolutely no control over. So I know my own rhythm is going to get interrupted. My consistency will take some hits. My focus will get pulled away. All of that is good.

But my writing job will be to keep weaving a path for my writing, as these changes come and go. To remember that my writing is waiting for me, to touch base with it when I can, and to remember that picking it up again means forward movement. I think the last two years have set me up for that, and I’m beyond grateful that I’ve had this time to get my own rhythm set.

2021

My Word for 2021: Surf

Posted on 31 Dec 202031 Dec 2020 by beckylevine

My word for this year, Surf, started off as a joke on social media, when I was commenting on the challenge of picking a word for a year that seems filled with unpredictability. Once I’d tossed it out there, though, the word kept coming back to me. And the more I thought about it, the more I liked it. That very unpredictability we’re facing makes me want a word that will help me do a better job of taking things as they come, riding whatever wave I’m on at the moment, and not taking a header every time a big one hits.

Last year’s word was Happy, and I thought about taking a do-over on 2020 and using the word again for 2021. But there have been plenty of times in 2020 when I was happy and–along with that–very aware of how my happiness was in direct contrast to the lives so many other people have been living. Happy has a weight for me right now that it didn’t at the beginning of the year. It has layers that are hard to deal with, layers that–when I am tired or stressed–I’m not up to looking at directly. So, while I expect and hope for more happiness in 2021, for everyone, Happy is a word with too many tangles for me to re-choose.

2021. I am fairly certain that we will have a new President & Vice-President on January 20th, and I am fairly certain that vaccines will continue to be distributed. But beyond that, I’m not making any guesses. 2020 has been a sharp reminder of how much I need to work on staying in the moment, because the rabbit holes I could, and did, go down were more dark and twisted than any I remember. For me staying in the moment means being staying flexible and looking just far enough ahead to make choices that will help me stay balanced. So…Surf.

In her post today, Erin Dionne broke out a few areas of her life where she wants to direct her word (Invest). I liked that a lot, so I’m stealing her idea for my post. In 2021, here are some of the waves I want to ride:

News and Politics

The past four years, I’ve been more aware and more involved than ever before. And, for all the stress, this has been a very good thing for me. It’s important to me that I don’t drop this engagement. I have all my fingers and toes crossed that Georgia will elect Warnock and Ossoff to the Senate but, even if they win, it’s going to be a hard, hard road. I want and need to stay on top of things, to step up whenever I can, to speak out and be heard. But this is also the wave that, more than any other, challenged me in 2020. I may not be able to hang 10 on this one, but I think I can keep from being bonked in the head with my own board.

Family and Friends

I have been incredibly lucky–my family and friends are staying healthy, and they’re staying financially stable. It has been hard not seeing them in person, but I am grateful that they are all taking this pandemic seriously and doing their very best to be safe. With the vaccines out there, I can feel my hopes rising–I’ll be able to visit my parents and sisters in 2021! And I can feel the hopes dip–maybe I will, maybe I won’t. We have Zoom, we have telephones. If/when the numbers decrease, I may feel comfortable doing socially distanced walks with a few friends. But this is a wave like no wave I’ve ever been on, and I need to ride it gently.

Writing

I know so many writers who have struggled with getting writing done this year. For me, after the first few months, my writing became the gentle wave that felt almost like standing on the sand. It gave me something to escape into, to spark my mind, and to feel hope about. I came up with ideas and stories that are stronger, in their foundations, than anything I’ve written before–it is so reassuring to know that I am actually learning and strengthening my craft. I’m staring 2021 off by paddling my writing board out to the bigger waves. Tomorrow is Day 1 of Storystorm, I’ll be signing up for my first year of 12 X 12, and I’m starting a multi-week picture book workshop in a couple of weeks. It’s going to be a windy ride, but it’s also a wave that, if I wipe out, I’ll know I’ll land in warm water and easily climb back on my board.

Health

I was going pretty well with keeping up my yoga practice for most of 2020 (thanks in good part to Adriene), but–as usual–I’ve slipped a bit over the holidays. I learned long ago that if I tell myself I have to do any physical exercise on certain days at certain times, my brain basically says, “No, I don’t,” and the surfboard just stays in the closet. I am aiming for 2 or 3 days of yoga, more days of simple things like push-ups and squats, and as close to daily meditation as I can get. But each day will be a choice, based on how I feel and what sounds best.

I had a mini-scare a few months ago when I did some routine lab work and my sugar numbers came back too high. I found a dietician who I click with. She’s knocked me out of the certainty that I have to eat fewer and fewer calories to be “healthy.” She’s gotten me to add a LOT of fiber to my daily eating (now’s the time to buy stock in beans, folks!). She’s checking my progress with BMI (pinches, not math formula), and I’m not getting near a scale. I’m finding that each meal is its own wave–one on which I make food choices that feel right at that moment, rather than deciding ahead of time that I have to eat this way or that. So far, the results have been good, and I haven’t felt deprived once. I am determined to stay on this board.

My life has been a progress from holding tight to what “should” be happening to learning to loosen my grip and face changes as they came. I am freer and more relaxed now than I ever was as a teen or young adult. 2021 seems the right year to take that progress a step further, ease up even more on the control, and respond to each wave as it comes.

I wish you all the happiest of New Years, and share my hope that 2021 will be a year of release and relief.

2020, Word for 2020

Looking Back & Moving Forward: My Word for 2020

Posted on 31 Dec 2019 by beckylevine

I’ve been reading and enjoying people’s posts about their last decade. I kept thinking, though, I don’t even remember what I was doing two years ago, let alone ten. But then I put some actual numbers to the years and said–oh, okay! So I’m adding my list to the mix.

Published The Writing & Critique Group Survival Guide with Writer’s Digest and published two nonfiction children’s books with Capstone Press. (These feel SO much longer ago than ten years, but I guess not!)
Completed & submitted a MG mystery & got some very nice rejections, but no takers.
Struggled to write & rewrite & rewrite a YA historical and a MG fantasy. The manuscripts are still a mess, but the ideas at least are still in a mental drawer. The research I did for the first book has stayed with me, inspiring me with leaders like Jane Addams and Ida B. Wells and all the women who worked with them and who gathered to march & fight for our vote.
Went back to day-job work full-time, beginning a new “career” path in grant writing for nonprofits. I did several years raising funds for STEM Education, always close to my heart, and then landed a job writing grants for our local Planned Parenthood affiliate. My actual career–where I place all my biggest dreams–has always been my creative writing, but after decades of trying out other jobs, I have finally found the place I am truly happy to show up for 40 hours/week.
Focused my writing on picture books and fell in love. I have thoughts about why writing for this age feels better to me than novels ever did, but the bottom line is that I am happier with this work. I enjoy the time I spend with my stories much more, I’m better at this genre, and I have made more craft progress in the past two years than I did for all the other years in this decade.
Spent time with family and friends, some of it easy and wonderful, some of it hard but important. I learned some (more) things about how I interact with people, and I see more clearly the gratitude I have for those I love.

It has been a good decade and, I think, an incredibly lucky one. In the past few years, of course, I’ve come to understand just how lucky I am and always have been, and I have started to do better in using that luck as a foundation for supporting others. I read Rebecca Traister’s book Good and Mad and found validation in it for the anger I have often felt; I also found a push to use that anger more effectively.

A couple of weeks ago, I was talking with someone I run into every few years, and she asked me–other than the writing she knew about—what else had I been up to? And my mind went blank. What had I been doing? For a solid minute or two, all I could see was the internal and external battle I’d been having with the state of the country/world–the surfing of news on social media, the going to marches and feeling guilty for not going to marches, the frantic donations of money that never seemed like enough, the calls and letters to government officials that only made a tiny, temporary dent in my feelings of helplessness.

And then I remembered the chores and date-nights and traveling I did with my husband; the times I’ve spent with my son–playing board games, sharing passages from books, laughing at his jokes, and just talking. I remembered the barre classes I’ve been taking, the plays I’ve seen, the music I’ve listened to. I remembered all the times I have been happy and in love with what I was doing and looking forward to what was coming next. But first…first, I remembered the yuck.

I don’t usually make New Years resolutions. But this year, I’m all in. I am not going to let the yuck win. I’m limiting my time on social media–no going on Facebook or Twitter before breakfast or after dinner. I’m going to have some easy opportunities to help with voter registration, and I’ll be doing that. I’ll talk to people about voting and about bringing unity at least to getting a Democrat into the White House. I’ll continue making financial donations, but I will set up most for automatic monthly giving. I’m committing to those three things.

And the rest of the time, I’m committing to happiness. I am going to find a way to continue working for change without losing the year to the emotional sludge. When January of 2021 comes around, I want to be able to look back and see the adventure, the laughter, the joy.

My word for 2020 is Happy.