One Word. Encapsulate the year in one word. Explain why you’re choosing that word. Now, imagine it’s one year from today, what would you like the word to be that captures 2021 for you?

From years past: 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011 and 2010

The one word that captures this year:
Unstable

What can you say about a year that feels like progress from 2020, but not really. In some ways, it felt like hope. The vaccines arrived, but then so did variants. The new president was…well confirmed, but then the denial and the lies kept going. Not to even mention that the insurrection began the whole year, the shootings of Asians in Atlanta, the harassment we endured… And then some professional failings. And personal, which was only consumer loss, but it felt too personal—the car, the phone, the ebook reader. But what is it all really, if it suggests new beginnings?

Last year, I said grief, maybe because 2020 started off with my grandmother—the last of her generation in my family—gone. And then the loss of what. There was the isolation yes, but also the pleasure. When things did open up in 2021, I resisted the interaction. I didn’t want to see people, but I eventually did. And it was fine. I liked seeing people. But I also felt like I was obligated. There were ups, my own creation, and downs, the failures.

And then I had then thought this year was hope. But instead, I say unstable. How can things be good and bad? It’s all in the reframe if I decide that it’s all good or all bad. I see it as a snake winding up and down, up and down. But what if the bad is simply just little bumps that you expected anyway to the good?

Next year, maybe more optimism. Beginnings. To new beginnings.