On Setting Gentle Intentions
How to Find Your Word of the Year and a Video Walkthrough of How I Set My Planning Up Without Overcomplicating Things | Wonder Drop January 2025 Edition
Wonder crew,
It’s our first Wonder Drop Creative Deep Dive of 2025!
An Introduction to the 2025 Monthly Wonder Drops
Before we jump into our content, here’s a short roadmap of what you’ll find in these monthly creative deep dives for our paid subscribers.
Each of our Wonder Drop Deep Dives will cover a topic related to wonder, creativity, creative practice, intentional living, art making, or other closely related topics.
The Wonder Drop delivers written and video content that includes a blend of practical encouragement, tips, behind-the-scenes, prompts, and storytelling. Each one is a little different depending on what is being covered.
The Wonder Drop will also include the link for our monthly paid subscriber LIVE Zoom Check-In and a curated list of favorite articles that came out on The Wonder Habit® over the preceding month or that are related from the archives.
In Our January 2025 Edition:
We are diving into creating a gentle intention-setting practice that works with our creativity and not against it. Including:
The power of framing words.
How to find and use a framing word of the year.
Questions I ask myself about my creative practice for a new year. These are great journaling prompts.
A chatty video where I share the behind-the-scenes of how I am setting my planning up to work with my creativity instead of overwhelming it and shutting it down.
The Power of Choosing a Framing Word for the Year
On occasions (like now ☺️), I will make a preview portion available to everyone.
In early January 2018 I sat with a pile of notebooks around me. Sketching, scribbling all the things that rambled through my head until I found the quiet space where I could listen.
We speak of choosing a word of the year, but sometimes I suspect the word chooses us.
My word for 2018 was openness. I dreamed up all that could mean. Open wide spaces. Growth for my business. Getting my life back.
It had been 5 long years of rebuilding after losing everything and returning from Africa. I felt like I could finally see light at the end of the tunnel.
Except it wasn’t the end of the tunnel. It was more like an oncoming train.
A few weeks later, I was a passenger in a car crash that damaged my writing and drawing wrist. Good bye calligraphy and wedding stationery business. And left me with a brain injury that took my words. Good-bye consulting, writing and everything else.
But you know the one word I held onto. Openness.
That the grief of loss would leave my heart bigger with more space than was there before.
I promised myself in those first months when my world was crumbling that if I ever built anything ever again it would be something I loved more than all I lost.
That I would find new words and become a better communicator.
That until I could do the things I loved, I would find others on social media doing the things I wanted to be doing and encourage them in their doing of them.
Everything in me wanted to shut down. And there were days I did. But then I opened up again.
These last 7 years have been brutal and beautiful and brutal again.
I lost my old words. But by staying open, I found my voice.
And it all brought me here to you.
K’ not crying. Actually, yes I am.
You know what? We did it. This space is something I love so much more than anything I did before the accident.
I have become a better communicator. By far and away. On so many levels.
I can trace the journey of the last few years through my framing words.
I call them framing words or framing phrases because they set a gentle intent I use to frame what the year brings my way.
Openness (2018) framed the empty space after such a profound loss of self.
Intent (2019) Rise (2020). I think I skipped 2021. I was just too tired.
Innovare (2022). It’s a Latin word meaning into-make new.
Praxis (2023) meaning practice. Emerge (2024). I did. WE did.
And now Savor (2025).
It’s a simple way to allow the unknown of a new year to be gently framed with hope.
Now we move on to some practical points on finding your word and/or letting your word find you. ☺️