Dear January,

I appreciate your enthusiasm, as you charge through the doorway of December 31 with streamers and a song. You cheer us on with gusto as we stumble out of the holiday snow globe.

Do you ever feel like it's just "one thing after another?" Or have you heard yourself say, with some amount of sourness, "it's always something!"

Of course you have. You're human and all kinds of things happen in life.

Like many of you, I like to choose a word of the year. Something to use as a filter for decisions, a guiding idea, a reminder. I choose a word that brings a felt-sense of something I want more of in my life.

2018 seems to be a multi-word year, warranting the power of a full-on phrase.