I’ve been thinking a lot about my #oneword2017. Last year’s word, Up, came so easily and this year’s did not.

I considered breathe. This past fall I didn’t take enough time to breathe and it really showed. I never felt settled into my new life as a kindergarten teacher and some parts of my regular life became harder than they should have been. Taking time to breathe would have really helped and I hope to do it more in 2017.

I also considered smile. One of the first LeadUpChat voxer conversations that really resonated with me helped me know that I had found friends. The discussion question was something about how to develop a school culture and several educators mentioned walking around with a smile. I had found my tribe! I figured if I made smile my word, I would better remember to do it more often.

In the midst of my thinking about this, I listened to an episode of the West Wing Weekly podcast. It was about the episode of The West Wing that I named my blog after so I figured that was pretty propitious! But I was unable to glean a single, meaningful word that jumped out to me.

Last weekend Zack and I went camping down on the eastside of the Sierras. Our first ski day involved crossing a small stream twice. After enduring gusty, down couloir winds for several hours I wasn’t looking forward to crossing back in the same spot so I said, Sure, I’ll go look for a better spot. That night we slept in the truck listening to the wind howl and thinking the campers on either side of us were going to topple into us. So the next morning when Ben had turned the valve on the hotspring on, I said, Sure, I’ll go for a dip.

This was new for me. Never before have I offered to do extra work on a ski tour. Rarely do I ever offer to get wet, especially when it is well below zero out. But it felt good. And there were no negative consequences. In the first case, my feet didn’t get wet in the stream. And in the second, I got wet but enjoyed the amazingness of the Owens River Valley!

So I’m going to say Sure more often.