The Happier Podcast, with hosts Gretchen Rubin and Elizabeth Craft, suggests that to live in an atmosphere of growth, one trick is to pick a “word of the year”. It has always sounded too Pollyanna-cutesy to me, so I’ve always resisted this exercise. This year I thought I’d try it, because, heck, at this point, what do I have to lose? It’s January 2021, we’re mid-pandemic, and the word I’ve picked to inspire me all the year long is “Expand”.
The word Expand seems to have a raft of possibilities. Since I’ll be starting a new path in my life at the end of this OSM season (officially, August), I thought it would be great to think about spreading out, taking off, finding new interests, and growing in both self-knowledge and regular knowledge. Expand seems the exact word to describe all these things. It’s a word that feels full of possibilities. I hope it will get me through all the contractions that we’re experiencing during COVID; the limited amount we can move around, the limited number of people we can see IRL, and the limited number of activities we can enjoy. “Expand” might be a metaphorical term for me this year, but I hope it will lead to real results.
I drew the word ”expand” on a piece of (already used) paper in coloured pencils, and I’ll post a photo of it here:
As you can see, I’m no artist, plus I have trouble planning ahead. The visual irony is not lost on me, by the way. I could have redone it, but I thought, nah, it’ll give me a smile every time I see it hanging on my bulletin board.
While I’m at it, I also want to ‘expand’ my knowledge of the internet and the many ways it can mess with you. For instance, I recently got scammed by an entity posing as a delivery company (I thought it was UPS, but no, it was IPS, doh!!) in a text. It said that someone tried to deliver a parcel but that nobody had been home, but if I paid the customs fee of 2USD they would try again. So, click, click, click and all of a sudden I’d given away all kinds of my important info to a bogus company (a dating site, no less!) . I won’t bore you with the details, but believe me, I feel about as foolish as a person could feel. If they’d asked me for my SIN# I probably would have put it in, I was so oblivious. In my defense, I have been waiting for a couple of parcels, so…oh, forget it.
I’ve spent today in a combo shame-spiral-panic-attack. I’ve cancelled my credit card and changed some important passwords, but other than that I haven’t done too much yet. Tomorrow Dave is going to accompany me (I need the moral support) to the police station to report a fraud. You’d be surprised how hard it is to get a real person on the phone at Equifax on a Saturday.
There’s nothing like the possibility of someone stealing your identity to add excitement to an otherwise quiet pandemic life. I hope this will end up not being as huge a deal as I’m currently imagining. I’ll keep you posted.
In the meantime I’ll expand my mind with extensive reading/knitting/watchingNetflix to try to block out this little nightmare I’m experiencing. Wish me luck.
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