In 2020, I appropriately chose a #OneWord of Resilience. For 2021 I chose Thrive. In January of 2023 I chose ‘Many words, not one word’, and these were: Consistency, Efficiency, Positivity, Vocal, and Gracious.

I’m not waiting for January to pick a new word. The school year starts on Tuesday and I’m picking a special #OneWord to focus on for my final year before retiring. This word is Pause.

The inspiration came on my weekly Coquitlam Crunch walk this morning. The past few weeks were prime blackberry season. They have been ripe for the picking, delicious and abundant. But last week it really seemed like the season was at its end. Today on our walk they were very few on the nearby branches and none were the large juicy variety that we could pick to our heart’s content just a week or two before.

Just like that, the season was over… Or so I thought. At the top of the trail we take a small detour loop through a more wooded area and just as we were about to get back on the main path, we passed a section that was filled with ripe berries ready to be picked. I grabbed one and kept walking. Then I stopped. I paused. I told my buddy to hold up. We paused our fitness trackers and spent a few minutes picking and eating blackberries.

A delicious pause in our day.

And there you have it: Inspiration for my last school year. Pause.

Taking the time to sneak in a final moment to enjoy the last of the blackberry season was my literal example of ‘stopping to smell the roses’. And that’s what I plan to do all year. Pause and appreciate, pause and celebrate, pause and experience.

There is a lot I’m going to miss when I leave this job, what I don’t want to do is miss things while I still have time to enjoy them. I’m going to seek out opportunities to take pause in my day and truly experience the things I cherish.