What’s in a Word?

With it being the beginning of a new year, so any of the blogs I read are selecting their words of the year.

This always annoys me. Maybe in my HR career I was forced to suffer through too many mission statement brainstorming sessions. To me, they are one and the same – meaningless and a time sink.

I audibly groaned when one of my favorite podcasts (48 Days) started off with the host announcing his word of the year. My mind did the teenage eye roll, and I quit focusing on the podcast. All of a sudden, my brain spit out what would be the perfect word for me: Exploring.

I’ve been spending a lot of time lately exploring long lists of job titles. Whenever something sounds remotely interesting, I use The Googles to find out more. To my long-time readers, this probably sounds familiar – I did the exact same exercise when I was looking to make the leap to a more meaningful job a few years ago. Back then I would get discouraged if it looked like one of those careers where the stars have to align to get a foothold. Now I’m looking for related volunteer opportunities where I could get a taste and possibly get that foothold.

But “exploring,” should I break down and decide to do the word of the year, wouldn’t have to be only job related. I’m planning on taking my from scratch skill sets up a notch. There is something about January that makes me want to go on a spending spree. I’ve bought a lot of supplies I’ll need for this skill building extravaganza. Get ready, readers, for some cooking posts showing off my new food experiments as I learn how to make them or discover I’ll need more practice to perfect. I am dying to explore where my cooking interests are going to fall this year.

You know I’m not one for spoilers, but here is a hint at some future blog posts:

DH2U introduced me to that clip. He knows me and might have created a monster.

Of course as soon as I wrote this I saw that The Bloggess has tackled this topic as well – as hilariously as always. I ❤ her.

Is anyone else irrationally annoyed by the word of the year or mission statements? or What will you be exploring in 2016?