2011 One Little Word Wrap-Up

For the last two years, I've chosen One Little Word to guide me for the year.  As a fan of Ali Edwards, her thoughts on the effects of choosing just one word, resonated with me.  And so I began the process in the last days of 2009, choosing 'Live' for 2010 and 'Grow' for 2011.

As I began reflecting on this last year, I pleasantly discovered that I had accomplished several of my goals and did indeed, Grow in many ways.  Sharing some of the ways I've grown on here at Time Crafted, seems only appropriate since so many of you have given me both inspiration and support.

I began the year taking Ali Edwards' year long One Little Word workshop at Big Picture Classes.  And while it was great to see Andi, Siri, and other familiar, friendly faces, I mostly worked on this offline.

She's repeating the workshop for 2012 and I'm leaning towards signing up again.  It definitely helped me keep 'Grow' close at heart throughout the year.

One night on Twitter, @thienkim urged me to check out The Sketchbook Challenge.  Her enthusiasm was infectious and I was excited to create along.

Creating an art journal always seemed intimidating to me.  It might sound silly, but many creative bloggers and artists I visit, have mad crazy talent and I fretted about not measuring up...until I realized that the goal isn't to 'measure up', but rather to grow, try new things, learn new skills, and improve on what I already do.  So, I did.

After reading the creative writing goodness that Mandy weaves with her words, I wanted to get back into my own creative writing.  I missed it and knew that it had been far too long since I swam with crazy colored words.

I decided to start small and began with a microfiction meme.  It's the shortest of short fiction, written in 140 characters or less, including spaces & punctuation.  Turns out, microfiction is a whole mess o' fun!

Looking at where Mandy was sharing her fiction with, I headed over to The Red Dress Club, which is now Write on Edge, a virtual writing community.

I began writing and sharing my fiction with their Red Writing Hood prompts, as well as some memoir with their RemembeRED prompts.

And then I got brave.  In November, a group of writers within the Write on Edge community participated in NaNoWriMo and I joined in.

I didn't hit the word count, but I'm okay with my results.  If you want to know what I thought was so cool about the whole process, check out my really short post: NaNoWriMo in 8 Sentences.

When Bruna, @beeswithhoney, said she wanted to feature me on her Let's BEE Friends series, I was tickled pink.  And when Sarah, @MamaRiceCake, asked me to write a positive guest post for her, I went Dancing with Rainbows.  Mandy asked me to guest post on Makes Fun and I wrote the low down on The Little Red Bear.

And speaking of writing, one more area I wanted to grow was right here on the blog.  In this case, I wanted to literally grow...more posts, that is.  I didn't set a goal or a specific number to hit; simply that I wanted to post more than I had last year.  And with this post, I'm coming in with 51 more posts than in 2010.  Grow Goal, accomplished.

I spent most of 2010 knowing that I needed wanted needed to upgrade my Point & Shoot camera.  I had squeezed out every ounce I could from it and was itching for a DSLR.  In February last year, it was time to take the leap.  I bought a Nikon D3100 and while I'm still learning how the heck to use it in manual, photography is something I've grown to love since beginning this blogging journey.

2011 became the year of the virtual Book Clubs, starting with Andrea (a sweet Book Fairy) leading one on the SITS Girls site, which is now over on her site Great Thoughts. She selects great books and we wrap our reads up with fun monthly Twitter parties, tweeting with the books' authors, using the hashtag #Gr8Books.  You should join us!

This fall, @thienkim asked me to be a From Left to Write Contributor.  What's wonderfully unique about this book club is that we write posts inspired by the books we read.  As a result I was able to share Who Will Tell Your Story?, as well as a favorite artist of ours, Michel LeRoux.  Another unique bit is that the book selection here really varies, widening my viewpoints, and hopefully, others' too.

This was a looong post, I know.  If you're still here, give yourself a pat on the back, a taste of Nutella, a cuppa java, or an ice cold martini.  Thanks for hanging in there!

The One Little Word, Grow, has taken me on quite a journey this year!  How about you?  Do you chose just one little word to hold near your heart, to guide you, to focus you in your year ahead? 

 

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