What’s your “Word of the Year”?

Or how your appetite for knowledge may make it difficult to define.

I discovered my word of the year today!

I’d been struggling with this because I felt like I should have a word of the year.

While everyone else declared their words and themes for 2018, I silently gave up and decided this was yet another thing that didn’t fit for me. #AlwaysTheOutkast

Why was it so effortless for them, yet so impossible for me?

I felt like I was in high school again, applying to colleges as an “undecided” major, while everyone else in my class was so certain of theirs. It seemed everyone around me had found their “passions”.

Why couldn’t I?

Whether it’s choosing a word for the year or selecting my life’s passion, I’ve often struggled to pin down my one thing.

I don’t do favorites, rather, I have preferences and things that I’m favoring for a season.

I don’t have one “true calling”. Rather, I have curiosities that I want to pursue and interests that nudge me to follow them. These change as I grow, learn, and experiment.

My mom once told me that it was harder for me to find my one thing because I was so brilliant that it was easy for me to become good at almost anything.

Perhaps there’s some truth in that. Maybe having the ability to become good at many things makes it difficult to choose just one.

But, I think it’s something else. Part of being an intelligent person means wanting to continue to learn and grow and explore.

There’s this constant desire to know more, to understand more, and to do more.

And I see this craving for learning presenting itself in 3 forms:

1. You go deep into one topic, learning everything you can about it. (These are your 10,000 hour experts that are renowned leaders in their respective fields) Side note: apparently, this 10k-hour expert-status rule doesn’t always hold.
2. You become insatiable for learning new things. (Think about those “multi-passionate” entrepreneurs like Chris Guillebeau, Jonathan Fields, or Malcolm Gladwell).
3. You tuck into 2–4 zones that fill you up. These are topics that you see yourself pursuing for years to come.

I think I’m that latter type of person.

Which means that, even now, as I declare that I’ve discovered the one word that will guide me and inspire me throughout 2018, I know that it’s likely to change.

So, my word of the year, for now is “Remarkable”.

Being “worthy of remark” is something I want to strive for. In the content that I create, in the value that I bring to the world, in the way that I show up for the people that matter in my life…

Of course wanting to be something and becoming it are very different. But that wanting is what drives us to become.

Now I have two questions for you:

1. Do you see yourself in one of my 3 learning appetites (if so, which one)
2. What word or theme is driving you for 2018 (at least for now)?