Slicing (and Coloring) My OLW

              Thanks to Stacey, Tara, Dana, Beth, Anna and Betsy for all the support last year. I wish you all a beautiful new year of both learning and possibilities! It's good to be in this community and hearing from so many about their lives, professional and personal.

It's the Tuesday Slice of Life!  Tweet at #sol15

          I wrote about my 2014 One Little Word in December, contemplating what it has meant to me, and starting the path to a new one. You can read that post here. I loved the word "wander". It felt comfortable and freeing, helped me make choices without worry, helped me take risks. This year I want that feeling too, but came across a few sentences one day, and the way this person wrote made me realize that I could use the word "PAINT" as a verb. The new year, every year, has often felt like a blank piece of paper to me. I've used Eve Merriam's poem Metaphor often at the beginning of the school year (find it here) and that poem has informed many of my teaching years. 
           Although I didn't post last week, I did read your posts, and noted all the One Little Words shared, and have continued to do so, wondering if I was missing some important word. Although I saw that all of you were inspired for 2015 by your word, I didn't see even one that whispered to me. The possibility of painting my year enthralls me. There are all those wonderful "what ifs" that come to mind, all those colors! So, PAINT it is.


Here's a wordle I made with the many OLWs I read about (although I know that today there will be more). Those that are larger, not counting my word, are ones that have been chosen by more than one person:

                And here's a beginning goal that I thought would be fun. I've really starting a little bit of painting, will try to do a page every day, reminding me to PAINT MY WORLD!

This little tree is what I call my kitchen tree, on a shelf
from Thanksgiving to Epiphany.

              My hope for all of you is to have a wonderful year, with or without a One Little Word, as Rilke said: "full of things that have never been."