Mid-Month New Year's Words and Intentions

I do not subscribe to New Year's resolutions.  They have this ring of built-in perfectionism around them that says that your execution of resolved new habit must be on time, first time, every time, all the time.  Perfectly executed.

What a ridiculous way to start a year.  Especially for a perfectionist.  No thanks!

It seems intentions are the new resolutions in many people's books.  Intentions give an indication that you are pointing in a particular direction but allow for sideways twists and ankle sprains and real life.  Intentions are much softer, less ego-bound.

My intention this year is kindness.  Especially, kindness in the midst of suffering.  A friend of mine, a practising Buddhist, is my guru in this area.  Regardless of what is happening, despite mishaps and bad days and mini meltdowns, she manages to find the peace ledge to sit and watch the swirling waves from.  It is the most admirable of traits, one earned by discipline.

And so my kindness intention is especially for those times when I am feeling bad.  There are a collection of swirly compactions that live around the space of feeling bad.  It's not that I intentionally take out my feeling bad on other people.  It's more that the Gaping Void moans in and takes over and everything is horrible.  The Gaping Void, however, has a few little minor issues with knowing when to stop eating, however.  Poor old Gaping Void.  All you can do, really, is give him a hug.

The kindness intention radiates inwards while it radiates outwards. 

For the past few years to mark a new calendar year I have also chosen a word that calls to me somehow, that encompasses what I hope for for the next year.  I love this approach.  It is suitably vague enough that my mysterious innards are able to surprise my mind with twists and turns with it over the space of a year.  Like a jigsaw puzzle that some of me knows about and the rest of me doesn't.

What I really wanted to do was to attach my word to a piece of crafting in some way.  Like the collage that The Pollinatrix made for her word for the year, for example, or the way Kel creates a visual journal around her word for the year.  But I haven't quite got there yet, and it's already almost the middle of the month.

But anyway, despite that, my word for this next year is transmute.

Transmute.  It feels rather less romantic a word than its stablemate, transform, and when it first came to me I wasn't quite sure if I was happy with my choice, even though it had that bubbly sort of resonance that is always a good indicator of stickability.  But then I ran across it in two separate pieces of writing I read over subsequent days, and so synchronicity sticks it to me. 

And anyway, I love the alchemical allusions of the word.  The Collins English Dictionary listing at The Free Dictionary defines transmute as: 

1. to change the form, character, or substance of

2. (Chemistry / Alchemy) to alter (an element, metal, etc.) by alchemy.

Perfect.

How about you?  Anything you do to mark the passing of one calendar year into another?

Ted Chiang's "Alchemist's Gate" by Hidenori Watanave