My Three Words For 2012

The arrival of a new year always brings with it great promise and the potential of something truly spectacular and wonderful.  The stumbles and wrong turns of 2011 are behind us, and there’s untraveled paths directly before our eyes on this second day of 2012. And you know what? We’ll standing at this very same point a year from now, making the same empty resolutions to do this one amazing thing, to turn that crazy idea into something real. You get the point, right?

2011 was hardly a banner year for me. It was one of the most challenging financially and professionally since I first started my career almost ten years ago. And while I can take the obvious line and blame it on economic shrinkage, that’s simply not true. The dirty messy truth is that I jumped at some opportunities because of the number. I don’t fault myself for fighting for paying clients (after all, I don’t do this writing thing for free!), but I do shoulder some of the blame for the (in)decisions that defined much of the last year.

Chris Brogan began a tradition some years ago with the simplest of premises: choose three words that will serve as the theme for the upcoming year.  You see, resolutions are meaningless. Take a look back at your resolutions from the past three years. How many took hold and are part of the way you live today?  I certainly have my list of abandoned albeit well-intentioned resolutions that litter the archives of my life. Forget resolutions. Set goals and build rituals around them.

So what are my three words for 2012?

Create. Tribes. Complete.

Create.

Content is my lifeblood. It’s the way that I measure my success at a deeply personal level – the things that I create (this blog, articles and stories that carry my byline, the occasional bit of published poetry) are part of the legacy that I’m chipping and chiseling away from the raw material of life. Creating things with my own hands and the power of my own brain carries its own rewards. I want to create content that matters outside of my own head, that makes a difference to someone. It means posting more frequently here (and if you’ve read this blog over the past year, you’ve known that this continues to be an ongoing struggle) and pursuing the things that stoke the fire in my belly.

Tribes.

Our lives are filled with them, though we might call them different things. Circles. Networks. Support systems. The relationships that I have forged both online and off over the past year are really nothing less than amazing. They have meant protracted philosophical conversations about an ever-changing world, a world-class social media event right here in central Pennsylvania and some truly profound friendships.  The power of people is something that I won’t ever take for granted. This year will be one of increased conversation and collaboration with those who I count among my personal brain trust.

Complete.

My office and EverNote are festooned with content ideas that never got past the first five words or a skeletal storyboard. As much as I enjoy creating content, sometimes bringing those ideas full-circle into something worthy clicking the ‘publish’ button is a downright Herculean task. I start lots of things. Finishing them is another matter entirely.  It’s also about recognizing when the time ripe to soldier through and complete that bear of a project that’s hanging in the wings.

So what are your three words for 2012? Share in the comments below and maybe spend some time writing them up into a post of their own.  I look forward to hearing what you have to say.