In 2019, I started the practice of choosing my own special WOTY, or Word of the Year. I heard about it on a podcast called Happiness with Gretchen Rubin. The idea is to choose a word or phrase as a personal theme, or goal, for the year—something to help you stay focused. In fact, that’s the word--focus—I choose for my very first WOTY back in 2019.
In 2020 I chose the word cultivate. It marked my first year of retirement, and I had so many creative and cultural projects I wanted to...well, cultivate. Of course, 2020 dealt us the pandemic with its lockdown and travel restrictions and constant uncertainty. I kept thinking, surely things will get better soon, but COVID-19 just kept on giving. Is it any wonder I chose hope for my 2021 WOTY?
Thinking about a WOTY for 2022 sent me down a few Internet rabbit holes. That’s how I discovered the American Dialect Society (ADS) has selected a WOTY for the English-speaking world every year since 1990. Granted, the ADS’s WOTY is different in that it’s selected after the fact, to sum up the preceding year in a word or phrase. Definitely, some of the ADS’s choices were telling. Here are some examples:
1992: Not!
1998: e- (as in e-mail or e-commerce)
1999: Y2K
2001: 9-11
2006: plutoed – (as in demoted or devalued, like what happened to my favorite planet, Pluto)
2008: bailout
2009: tweet
2015: singular they (as a gender-neutral pronoun)
2017: fake news
2021: insurrection
Isn’t it amazing how one little word can bring to mind so many memories of a time from the past?
I don’t kid myself for a minute that my WOTY list conveys anywhere near as much depth or history as the ADS’s—or Merriam-Webster’s, which began its own WOTY list in 2003, or Oxford University Press’s, which started a year later.
Still, I can’t seem to quit my list.
On Christmas Day 2021, I still hadn’t picked my word for 2022, even as I sat for three hours in WellStar’s Urgent Care waiting to test for Omicron. The latest variant had hit some family members just in time to ruin holiday plans, and, to be honest, I was pissed.
Yet as I sat in the WellStar waiting room, I also reminded myself I was fortunate...that I still got to celebrate the holiday with Rice...that the virus was quicker and gentler this round...that the frontline workers were kind and professional and healthy even as they, like COVID-19, just kept on giving. Sitting there reminded me that how I frame things matters, that I can add up my grievances and grouse, or I can count my blessings and savor them.
So here’s the thing. I've decided I'd best be re-framing like a mad woman about now.
And here's the other thing, in case you don't already know. My 2022 WOTY is lucky. What’s yours?
Cheers ~ Jan
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