Choice Words

My good friend EB has selected her word for the year for 2008. What is a "word for the year?" It's a guiding word. Sort of the rudder on the ship of your entire next fifty-two weeks. Or, put into English teacher jargon, it's the thesis statement of your 2008 essay, which will be titled "My Life." (Please double space it. Use 12-point font and 1-inch margins.)

When I read her post, I started thinking about what my word would be. I couldn't decide. The first word that came to mind was "focus." Because it seems that 80% of my problems are a result of my not being able to keep my mind on something in particular.

I try, for example, to finish an essay I've been working on for months. I sit down and look at it. I write a sentence. I change a couple of words. I go check the clothes in the dryer. I get a glass of water. I come back to the screen. I check my email. I look on yahoo for the latest celebrity bullshit and to see if anyone has died. I go back to the essay. I'm bored. I wonder what there is to snack on. I wonder what other people are doing.

It makes me feel like a chipmunk that's had hot sauce and Drano poured on its ass and is frantically running up and down a tree trying to escape it.

"Focus" would also be useful in my lukewarm spiritual/prayer life. More focus might actually transform my prayers from the drive-by shootings that they are, to something fully thought out that might possibly transform me. God must get annoyed by this:

"Yeah, it's me again. So. Things are sucking right now. I know that you know that I know you're in charge of things. But could you just fix (insert topic of highest anxiety here)? Or at least help me stop chewing on it like a gerbil with a frozen waffle?"

My prayers are like the irritating friend who calls only when she needs a ride to the airport. After you help her move.

I'm also considering "bagworm" for my word. In case you've never seen one, they're plant eating larva that wrap themselves in these silky, icky, dead-grass little bags about the size of a Brazil nut and then hang onto shrubbery and do nothing. No, wait. They eat. They hang there in those bags and eat and contribute nothing of use to the world except being exceedingly gross because there they are, all these tiny bags and you know there's a worm inside each one. Like a slimy Barbara Eden inside her genie bottle. When I was a kid, my mother would pay me a penny for each bagworm that I picked off the shrubs and threw into a paper grocery bag. Yes. Bagworms in a bag. She would do anything to get me away from the TV.

"Bagworm" would be a cautionary word. It would be saying "Candy, don't just hang around eating and doing nothing while your bulbous ass gets bigger. Get on that elliptical. Wake up. Live in the moment. String some shiny beads. Make something of yourself."

I could go warm and fuzzy and make "Love" my word. But as is always the case when I try to go warm and fuzzy and nice, it would backfire. I would last about 4 minutes in the "I will be a nice person and spread love to all those around me" mode. Then I would stab someone in the thigh with a javelin.

What will your word be?