When I was starting out as a copywriter, my boss taught me a practice to easily capture the idea of the brand I was working with. She calls it Brand in a Word. A baby soap brand is ‘Touch’, a heritage fast food chain is ‘Childhood’, you get the idea.
In the last 5 years, I have practiced this to summarise my experience for the year. But I’ve never really written it down (except for 2018). As I am in the middle of planning my life, I think this is the perfect time to look back and get the words on record.
2016: Healing. After a turbulent 2015, 2016 was my YOLO year. This was the year I fell in love with travel and getting lost; with meeting new people and immersing in a life totally different from my own.
2017: Gratitude. It was this year that I started getting deeply personal in with my spirituality: I was reading the Bible, learning about other religions like Buddhism and practicing Stoicism, Gratefulness and Journaling. Through that, I was able to appreciate everything that has happened in my life.
2018: Radiate. This year was the toughest on both personal and work fronts. But because of the learnings and un-learnings from the previous years, I was able to maintain a calm and positive mind at the most crucial moments, which helped keep my team’s morale up.
However, what I’ve also learned during this period was that this cup of positivity can dry up. That I had to know when to step back to refill and put boundaries. Whatever is inside of me will radiate outwards. Just as my positivity radiated thru my team, so did the negative energy.
Which brings me to 2019: Humility. The humility to accept the fact that I cannot fix everything — that some broken things will remain broken, no matter how much effort and love I put into it. The humility to accept mistakes I have made, and its consequences. The humility to walk away from things I am no longer part of or needed, even if it was a thing I have treasured most at the time. In retrospect, there is always something good to come out of bad situations. And that everything will eventually be okay.
These words don’t usually come to me at the start of the year, as I prefer things to unravel. But I was traveling thru Indochina recently and came with the realisation that in the last 5 years, I have moved houses 6 times, changed jobs 5 times, and never really settled in anyway.
I’ve never felt at home, not even in my parent’s house. The places I moved in are usually furnished by the owner, so it always felt like I was just ‘staying with a friend’. I’d put in touches of myself, but at the back of my head, I know I’d eventually leave.
Same with all the jobs I’ve held in the last five years. I never decorate my office. Between fight or flight, my choice usually is the latter.
So the word for 2020 came to me easily: Home. It’s time for me to set my roots, settle down and stay. Commit to whatever I decide on and work on it. A place, a job, a person will not feel like Home right away, not with the mindset that I usually come in with.
I have to bring in my own furniture and decorations, set it up and live in it, so to speak. It’s scary as fuck as my life can literally fit into two 60L backpacks. But fleeting and temporary does not excite me anymore. It’s time to unpack.
EatPrayLovel 