On the eve of the New Year, nearly my entire extended family sat around a large square table, three people to an edge, while I looked on from the kitchen bar. We had just finished eating chicken paprikash, a specialty of my partner’s, who learned to make it just for me and had tripled the already large and time-consuming recipe to feed everyone. I wasn’t excluded, per se, just expected to keep a bit of distance since I’d just tested positive for Covid and no one else had—yet.
My sister suggested that rather than sharing our New Year’s resolutions, we each pick one word to embody our resolution and share it with the rest of the group.
The list was a good one.
It included things like Joy, Positivity, Restfulness, and Perseverance. The task allowed people to share as little or as much detail as they wanted about their personal resolution, which was likely the point. My sister is rather thoughtful that way.
Mine was Entrepreneurship.
My mom tried to change it to Bravery when I explained it. I told her I wanted to improve my business sense and work on expanding my portfolio…specifically, I hope to perfect my gig descriptions on apps like Fiverr in order to gain more work there, and not limit myself in terms of the different kinds of work I can monetize.
One thing I’ve discovered is that there is a lot of work I can do that people need, and, unlike in past corporate positions, I don’t need to stick to one, two, or even three types of jobs. I can take on whatever role I want in order to be of service to clients and also increase my income.
Yes, I suppose to do that I need to be brave, but I’m not sure that Bravery encompasses the hard work and dedication I’ll need to employ in order to reach my goals…and I have so many goals.
As I sit here in the sun room at my parents’ home, completely asymptomatic but still distancing along with other relatives who later tested positive for Covid, I wonder if what I really need to focus on is being brave enough to try new things and create my career—or if Entrepreneurship covers that and more.
Either way, I’m glad it’s 2022 and I’m blessed with the time, energy, health, and support I need to figure it out. I haven’t been working for myself for long, but in that time, the role I’ve taken on has evolved quickly, due mostly to the diversity of projects I’ve taken on.
In four short months, I’ve proofread and edited books, journal manuscripts, product descriptions, proposals, and more. I’ve created scientific and medical diagrams to be included in proposals, slides for presentations, cover letters, reviews, back cover blurbs, landing pages, websites, and blog posts. I’ve outlined and started writing an extensive fiction book series and begun to resurrect an old time travel book I wrote in junior college. I was even mentioned for the first time ever in the Acknowledgements section of a book I edited! What’s more, I’ve finally started focusing on my own mental, emotional, and physical wellbeing in a way that I never did in all the time I was working for someone else, and those changes that all began internally will likely start to show over the course of this year.
For many, 2020 hit like a freight train, and 2021 was an absolute rollercoaster.
For me, 2020 was a wakeup call, and by August 2021, I learned to stop hitting snooze.
I can’t wait to look back on 2022 and see how far I’ve come, now I’m living fully awake. Whether I can sum up my actions as Entrepreneurship or Bravery, I’ll only find out at the end of the year. To start with, though, I’ll take a page out of my own book and say that my resolution isn’t limited to one thing. It can be both.
Happy 2022, and all my very best wishes to you and yours for a fantastic year,
