54 Words I Love
Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash
I love words. I especially love playing with words and arranging them to tell a story.
I also love Knock-Knock Jokes and tongue twisters and word puzzles—although I am generally not patient enough to see the latter through. As I approached my 54th birthday, which was last month I conceived of a project (inspired by Ali Edwards) that has had me contemplating a list of words—54 words—that I find significant, memorable, interesting and FUN right now in my life. I’ve enjoyed this project and in today’s episode I’m sharing the results with you.
Selecting these words was not as easy as I thought it would be when I started. I rattled off the first 15 without a problem, but then as my list progressed I realized two things …
54 words is a LOT of words.
54 words is not enough words.
… and yes these realizations seem to be contradictory. That’s what has proven to be so exciting and challenging with this list. Initially I thought, “I’m not sure there are 54 words I love” and then after a few weeks into the process I began trading words like CLEVER, IDEA and FOCUS for words like BOOTS, ELBOW and ZANY. Whaat? As I negotiated my words I learned a lot about me. Just like my list I am an interesting (if not odd) mix of personality traits and while I’d love to show the world only the enviable qualities like intelligence, humor and generosity, there are also present those less-esteemed parts of me, that I’m either still working to eradicate (selfishness and impatience) or am at this age simply choosing to embrace as necessary evidence that quirky, playful and curious can sit at the table with those others that are perhaps more aspirational.
I decided to create a word cloud of all the words on my list and post it to my blog, HERE.
All of this rambling is simply to say that this has been FUN. Not easy, but thoroughly enjoyable. I invite YOU to do something similar. Play with words. Use them to discover more about yourself. Use them to lift and teach others and use them to tell your story—you have exactly enough time!
p.s. Go HERE for some really great BOOTS that are certain to happify!
Sadly, my giraffe boots with green trim are no longer available, but check out these that I just ordered!
Looking for a transcript of this episode? Click here to download.
