Wellness and Creativity: A Cycle of Personal and Collective Flourishing
How what I most yearn for this year relates to both going deeply inward and spreading broadly outward
I’m one of those people who picks a word each January as a touchstone for the year. It’s not a resolution but instead serves as a guide. It sets the intention for what I want to focus on. It’s something I can come back to throughout the year as I inevitably get lost in some way or another.
In past years, my words have included: Breathe, Trust the Process, Comfort … I don’t recall if I set a 2023 word of the year. My father passed a week before the turn of the calendar page and most of that is a blur. (Over in Notes people recently gave me lots of wonderful support and advice around this grief anniversary because this community is amazing.)
Some years, I set the word and don’t think about it a whole lot. Most years, I set the word and focus on it off and on in different ways throughout the year. Some years, I get really complex and detailed with it. In 2020, I wrote an article for Happily Hooked magazine detailing a comprehensive approach to choosing and using your word of the year, enhancing its power through crochet, with a different quarter by quarter focus. (Then it was 2020 and you know …)
As we head into 2024, I land repeatedly on the word wellness. I think part of me didn’t want it to be this word because this word has so many consumer-focused self-care connotations, so many snake oil quick fix connotations, so much built-in privilege. I considered “eudaemonia” instead but that’s just being pretentious and I wouldn’t remember or use it anyway. And really, what I need/want most to focus on is wellness.
Wellness of mind, body, spirit, finances, times, energy, relationships. Holistic wellness. Wellness meaning how do I be most well right now in this moment? It’s not about setting specific goals I have to meet. It’s not about reaching a certain weight, having a certain diet, seeing a certain doctor, achieving a certain level of success. It’s about pausing regularly to ask myself what wellness means for me in this moment, day, week, month, year, life. And reorienting towards it again and again.
Because I will get lost from it. I will remember that eating sugar makes me feel less well, consistently (except in really rare instances where I indulge in chocolate mousse and the nostalgic joy of it seems to erase the physical impact of it). I will remember that, and I will eat less sugar, and then I will forget that, and then one day I will think, “what does wellness look like today?” and I will remember that it might look like less sugar.
Because it will change and shift. Because sometimes wellness means staying in bed all day and sometimes that’s an indication of definitely not wellness for me. Because sometimes wellness means keeping my commitments and sometimes wellness means canceling last minute. Because sometimes wellness means setting my boundaries with people and sometimes wellness means relaxing them. Because there are probably many things I don’t even realize wellness is or could be and I want to be open to exploring them.
So, largely the wellness focus will be spotlighted on myself. I’ve not been journaling much lately and I want to set an intention to journal daily again with this specific focus of tuning into what is well (gratitude) and what things can increase wellness in varied areas of life.
But also, my work is about wellness, the wellness of individuals and communities. It’s about how we all live on a spectrum of wellness (or is it a spiral?) and we all live on a spectrum of creativity and these things intersect in myriad ways. And by talking about these ways with all kinds of different people, I hope to create a library of resources that allows us to understand both the catharsis and the detriment in this relationship, both the symbiosis and the internecine. What I’m really hoping is that this work, sometimes immediately, often over time, can increase wellness across different parts of living for both individuals and communities in a broad way. That’s my hope. That’s my work. That’s my passion, purpose, dream, intention.
I seek to understand my own wellness so that I can support, magnify, and celebrate the wellness of others.
So, my word of the year is wellness, and my related intentions are as follows:
To continue this work on Substack as long as I can with particular emphasis on interviews and collaboration that will grow this library of information on how wellness and creativity intersect
To observe, notice, honor, celebrate, attend to, question, discuss, share, create around what wellness actually truly means to me in any given moment … and to encourage others around me to do the same in whatever way makes sense for them, to amplify the voices of those who are sharing that wisdom, and to give gratitude for every connection where I experience that sharing
To that end - to read and listen and learn and research and figure out what wellness means but to always turn back to my own gut instinct because what’s true for me is where I absolutely must start
Thank you for being here with me on my creative wellness journey. There are some exciting things in the works here for 2024 but mostly what you’re already used to here will continue as is because I’ve already been doing this work for years. I am so glad that you are a part of it in any way that you can be. I wish you well as we move forward into 2024.
Hugs,
Kathryn
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"Pivot" is my word this year, mainly because my guides have been emphasizing it for at least the last year and a half. So, I take it as being light enough on my feet that I can change direction quickly if I need to.
Eudaemonia being pretentious made me chuckle! I love how you describe wellness as being so many, sometimes contrasting things – wellness is doing the thing and it's also not doing the thing. And I'm so sorry you lost your dad a year ago, that's so tough and I'm glad you've felt supported here as you've navigated the first anniversary x