2012 – Pray, Produce, & Conserve

The other day, I shared three words that I had chosen as my focus for 2012 with my close friends & family on Facebook.

This morning, I thought that I might also share – and expand upon them – here.

My three words (verbs, or actions, if you will) for 2012 are: Pray, Produce, and Conserve. I hope to focus on doing each of these things well this year, and will measure my success for the year based upon these three actions.

PRAY:
This one is pretty self-explanatory, perhaps. I will add one bit of detail to those less familiar with me, though: One of the best gifts I received this Christmas was a full set of the Liturgy of the Hours from my beautiful wife Suzanne. This will allow me to more easily pray the full set of hours along with the Church, and retire my use of the more abbreviated Christian Prayer. The word means more to me than the mechanics of praying more diligently with the Church’s structured prayer, though. For me, it means a more conscious effort to pray every moment even more this year, and to sanctify as much of each day as I can muster through prayer and through love.

PRODUCE:
To me on January 3, “Produce” means to be more focused on projects when I’m working, whether that means in my day job as an analyst and Adobe consultant, or in my side products in the off-hours. For my professional clients, it means that I want to use my tools and my time to find ways to produce more for you while I’m focused on your work. It also means producing as a more focused dad & father when I’m with my family, producing more in my relationships by being more focused on them, producing more in my garden by learning more and working harder at it, producing more in my home by being more diligent with my to do lists and focusing on learning how to be more handy. Overall, it also means being focused on producing what I should in each part of my day, even including getting better sleep so that I can be more productive during my waking hours.

CONSERVE:
As we start the year, “Conserve” means to me that I can focus on wasting less. I can look to find new uses for extra things around the house, or give them to others who can use them more than I can (in turn, conserving my own space and attention.) I can look to be more thrifty in how we use the produce of our garden and of our grocery trips. I can cook more at home, drive out less for coffee, make each trip out for supplies more focused and productive (and thus conserve energy.)

There you have it – as we’re on the third day of the new calendar year, these aren’t resolutions (I made my sole new year’s resolution on the Church’s new year on the First Sunday of Advent, and I’m doing okay with it), but these are areas of action and focus for me as we flip through this calendar year, and I’m feeling pretty good about them so far.