Each year, in addition to making resolutions, I engage in the practice of choosing a word of the year. This word emphasizes my focus for the year and is a reminder for every decision I make during that year. The word can be a character trait, a general principle or a filter for decisions that must be made. 

One word of advice I always follow is to be careful about which word I choose. Inherent in any word choice is the possibility for challenges. The word of the year, like a season of life, will mark that year until it is done teaching us what we need to know. 

This means that a year marked with “love” might entail challenges of losing someone we love- whether it’s through them moving away or through a break up. It also might mean that I need to face myself and realize that I haven’t been taking the best care of myself. That I need to make some major changes before I’m able to complete the year and move on. 

This year, the word “fearless” stood out clearly in my mind in December. I wanted to stop being scared of being authentic, staying stuck and spending time dreaming instead of doing. I wanted to be able to embrace myself just as I was and chase some dreams that I had kept hidden for a long time. 

I designed a test for myself that each major decision would need to pass a test. In this test, the question was what path led to a balance between fearlessness and practicality. I would then choose the option that went closer to the fearless path (without completely abandoning my senses). 

. Fearlessness means a lot of things to a lot of different people. I think the basics of being fearless consist of: 

• Being open to new challenges
• Allowing ourselves to make changes that help us embrace life
• Making the choices that help us live our best life
• Understanding that life won’t always deal what we want but not being afraid of what life will send us.

These principles apply universally, regardless of lifestyle choices or what our dreams for living are. 

There was a major benefit and a major downfall to my experience in the last 10 months. 

The downfall was in changing my work situation. Before this year I had worked two extremely similar jobs- 9 years and 5 years respectively. I was bored of the repetitiveness. I didn’t want to keep going to the same job where I wasn’t appreciated. 

This was the year that I signed up for a temp agency and went through three jobs. I also worked driving for Lyft for a month and was unemployed for a month. For the last one, I was told that I could collect unemployment and was then denied for having a side job where I made about 100$ a week. Finances and employment were the two rocky parts of the year. However, they taught me a lot about managing a budget, having a better attitude at work and being grateful for less than perfect jobs. It also helped me to kick my worst addictions of smoking cigarettes and drinking over 64 ounces of energy drinks daily. It’s also helped me become more determined than ever to pay down my credit cards month by month. 

The best part of this year was that it helped me embrace the aspect of daily writing. It’s helping me start to work on achieving my dreams of having a writing side hustle. 

I fell in love with writing as an undergraduate studying Literature (and writing poetry as a minor). Poetry was my art for eight years until I decided to start content writing last fall. For the last three years, I would kick myself that I wasn’t actually doing the work that I loved to do. Every passing year reminded me that I could have been so much further if I had started the year before. Part of being fearless this year meant that I committed to writing a weekly blog and contributing to other publications. It forced me to start solidly working on improving and becoming better while putting 100% of myself into my work. 

The last ten months have made me stronger, more vulnerable and happier than I had ever imagined they would in December of last year. It’s strange to look back on some of the changes that have happened within the last year. For some of these challenges, it was hard finding a positive. However, in reviewing I can see that they were just life unfolding in front of me. I needed to be more mindful in my everyday life, and these changes helped to make it happen. 

The word fearless has helped me with a few other questions as well: 

• What’s the worst that can happen? 
• What could have been worse about this situation? 
• What do I really want- for now, and for the long term? 
• How does this choice lead me closer to my ultimate goals? 

Eventually, my dream is to be a freelancer living in a small town during the summers and the city during the winters. I know that I will face these questions again. The year of fearless living has enabled me to know that I can actually be successful in living my future dreams. It’s given me confidence to chase these dreams. 

In the last three months of the year, there’s still time to learn. Not everything has been perfect, but I know that we all have two choices we can make daily. The first is to do the things our hearts know they truly want and pursue these things. The second choice is to keep pushing it off. I’ve learned that the first is better in every circumstance. It’s always the better option to face the fear of making changes and taking risks. Ten years from now, I’ll regret the shots that I refused to take. I won’t regret trying my hardest to accomplish what’s in my heart. Ten years from now, I won’t see that time as wasted.