One Word 2012

So I realize I’m a bit behind the time with the whole “One Word 2012” thing. For those of you who do not know, One Word 2012 was this big thing at the beginning of the calendar year, where people selected one word that they wanted to define their year. At the time, I did not partake. Partly because I was crazy busy and all over the place, partly because I had no idea what word I would select for the theme of my year, and partly because I do not view the calendar year as being as significant as the academic year.

I was chatting with my uncle on Wednesday evening about where I am in my life and what I am doing. Something that came up was this feeling I’ve had for the past year or so. It is a feeling of homelessness. Not literally homelessness, but a figurative homelessness. My wanderlust has led me to Oklahoma where I have spent the past year working on my masters degree. While being in Oklahoma, I have spent a lot of time wishing I was in California. Yet now that I am back in California, I spend some small part of my time wishing I was in Oklahoma.

I’ve been Searching. Searching for a place to call home, for people to call my own. And I will continue searching. Searching is probably my one word of the decade, much less the year. But I have decided that this is the year of the search.

I’ve been searching through my faith, trying to ascertain what it means to me and more importantly, how others see what it means to me.

I’ve been searching through my relationships with others, trying to find good people who reflect the things I value. Which is difficult, when I’m searching through my values, trying to figure out what it all means.

I’ve been searching through my professionalism, struggling with comparing myself to others, near and far. Comparing myself to my mentors and role models, to classmates, to those I know in other programs. I’ve been searching for the confidence to remember who I am and what that means.

Don Miller talks about how we need to be away from home to understand who we are and what our place in the world is. This year away from my home, from everything I have ever known has taught me so much about who I am and who I want to be, yet I know I have so much more to learn and discern.

As I procede through the year, I want to resolve some of these issues as much as is reasonable for someone of my age. I want to be the best I can be at my job. I want to figure out how I fit in this world, and what that means.

The core of myself is still here – I want to impact the world, I want to change lives, I want to listen, to read, to write. But the Why and How of all that is what I need to determine.