Star words for a new year

Some people choose a word for the New Year, something to consider each day all year long.  Here are some examples:

Attentiveness, Authenticity, Awareness, Becoming, Breakthroughs, Capacity, Catalyst, Connection, Continue, Courage, Creativity, Cultivate, Dedication, Depth, Development, Discovery, Emergence, Endeavor, Enriching, Enthusiasm, Flourishing, Gentleness, Growth, Harmonizing, Imagination, Journeying, Learning, Nurturing, Observation, Open-heartedness, Potential, Possibility, Preparation, Process, Readiness, Reimagining, Reflection, Renewal, Transformation, Wonderment.

Some people even choose three words to represent their aspirations for the New Year, like these two illustrations I found online.  The words are often alliterative, meaning they start with the same letter.  Here are some examples:

• Compassion, Courage, and Curiosity
• Purpose, Passion, and Pluralism
• Gratitude, Graciousness, and Generosity

To choose a word for the New Year, you can:

1. Create a list of words (or use those above that I shared).
2. Select the word that resonates the most with you.
3. Try it out, and make adjustments if needed.
4. Display the word somewhere visible, to remind you each day.

A new plan for a new year

It's a new year, so what (if anything) will I do differently?  I've decided to copy some other book bloggers, who include a summary of the week's posts and/or activities.  So today, I'm showing links to some of what I wrote in this week's posts, as well as telling you about a book I'm about to read.

On the first day of this new year, I posted some "gentle goals" I found online (HERE).  I immediately noticed "Read for pleasure" on the list.  Well, sure, I do a lot of that already.  "Practice gratitude every day" sounds like what I already mentioned I would try to to when I wrote about a Gratitude Journal (HERE).  I posted a snippet from a Book Beginning (HERE), and I mused about a book and a word (HERE).  That's all I posted this week.

The English Major ~ by Jim Harrison, 2008, literary fiction (USA), 255 pages

Folks online say this is a book "for a male audience" and "Cliff’s on-the-road adventures are full of great characters [and] lusty encounters."  So I'm a little hesitant as I begin to read this.  But I majored in English (among other studies) and once had a jigsaw puzzle of the United States.  So I got this book thinking it was a sort of adventure as the main character travels throughout the country.  The dust jacket says:

"It used to be Cliff and Vivian and now it isn't."  With these words, Jim Harrison sends his sixty-something protagonist, divorced and robbed of his farm by a late-blooming real estate shark of an ex-wife, on a road trip across America, armed with a childhood puzzle of the United States and a mission to rename all the states and state birds to overcome the banal names men have given them.  Cliff's adventures take him through a whirlwind affair with a former student from his high school-teacher days twenty-some years before, to a "snake farm" in Arizona owned by an old classmate; and to the high-octane existence of his son, a big-time movie producer in San Francisco.

and Sunday Salon

Beginning ~ with hard candy

Beginning

When she recalls that period of her life, she likens it to a piece of the hard candy she'd often enjoyed as a child.  Round, colorful, tangy, sweet on the outside, and bitter at the center.

Loving Donovan: A Novel in Three Stories ~ by Bernice L. McFadden, 2003, fiction, 227 pages

Three stories?  Yeah, called Her, Him, and Them.  That let me know that this is a love story of some kind.  Campbell and Donovan live in the same neighbor-hood, but they don't know each other.

• Her is Campbell, who clings to her ideals about love despite the unhappy example set by her parents.
• Him is Donovan, who dreams of having a family and playing for the NBA in the face of difficult personal challenges.

The book is from her point of view, so the beginning I shared above is hers.

Gilion at Rose City Reader hosts

Book Beginnings on Fridays.

Gratitude and kindness

Words of the day = GRATITUDE and KINDNESS