I have decided to participate in Reverb 10 for the month of December. It is a month long event to get folks “to reflect on your year and manifest what’s next.” Daily prompts will be sent out bythe organizers and authors for us to reflect on and act on accordingly, whether that be through words, drawings or photos.

Today is the first day for Reverb 10 and the prompt was posted as follows:

December 1 One Word.
Encapsulate the year 2010 in one word. Explain why you’re choosing that word. Now, imagine it’s one year from today, what would you like the word to be that captures 2011 for you?

It did not take long for me to come up with my year 2010 in one word…stress! I have never felt stress as much as I have during this year. It affected all aspects of my life: personal, professional, financial, and spiritual.

I know that a lot of it was caused by me, either by some selfish actions on my part, unwillingness to listen or learn, or plain stubbornness to do the right thing.

I have struggled personally many times throughout the year. Most of it coming from my closest relationships in my life: my wife, kids and mother. I am not normally a stubborn person, but many times this year, I have been a horse’s ass to the closest members of my family. It is something that I regret and that I am actively trying to remedy by being a better husband, father and son!

Stress at work has really come from the beginning of a major renovation project that we have been engaged in since March. To make it worse, my wife is in charge of most of the renovation logistics for the city, while I am in charge of all of the technical renovations that we are doing. So we were doubly stressed (leading to even more personal stress). The renovation is (hopefully) in the last 8 weeks, but it is also the period where we begin installing all of the new A/V equipment in our City Council Chambers and I have to make sure it all works together as well as come up with new workflows for our meetings.

I have never had as financially stressful as we have had this year. With both of us working for the same municipality, we have all of our eggs in one basket. Our city is struggling financially (like a lot of them are) and we were not given raises this year. In fact, we had to lay off 19 workers in July, and neither of us were quite sure if we would have jobs after that. Couple that with some bad decisions that I made early in the year and a number of car and home repairs and we have been under the gun a lot more than usual. Some things are happening right now that I hope will alleviate a lot of the financial burdens I had this year.

Spiritual struggles also ruled my year like never before. I am a Christian (and have been for most of my 39 years of life), but this year I have had a hard time seeing God anywhere. Luckily, I have some great friends that have been my rocks during these times and helped me find what I was looking for. It has taken my sister breast cancer diagnosis to get me back on my knees every night to ask God to be with her doctors to rip that cancer out of her body (and according to her, He is doing just that!).

With that said, I want to make 2011 a year of focus like no other.

I have always been a productivity nerd, but I have never really fully embodied the movement. I want to take this next year and really focus more on what is in front of me and quit worrying about everything else circling about. My goal is to take the task that I am doing (whether that is playing ball with my boy, teaching my little girl to catch, writing a new computer policy, or writing for one of my blogs) and put a laserlike focus on it and do the absolute best that I can do.

If I can accomplish this, then all of the stress that I felt throughout 2010 in all aspects of my life should just vanish into thin air, and hopefully out of my mind forever.