Sometime near the end of 2014 or the beginning of 2015, I decided to try the "one word for the year" challenge (http://myoneword.org/). I had heard about it on the radio a couple years prior and how God had used it in incredible ways for the people participating in it. I prayed about it, trying to figure out my word. For three weeks, the one word that stood out to me was "new."
So, how did the one word work out for the year? Here are some events that happened throughout the year.
- In February, I left the dental lab industry after 15 years and started a new career doing what I had wanted to do for years (programming). I started web and app development full time.
- I dove into WordPress development and started writing plugins. Prior to that, I had only done some theme customizations.
- We put our house up for sale in preparation of a new adventure - moving to Michigan. We were originally going to move to New York for the job, but that changed over the summer and we were given the freedom to choose where we wanted to go. After praying and researching areas, we decided on somewhere around Grand Rapids, Michigan.
- In September, I was laid off from my job. This opened up the doors for some interesting opportunities.
- At the urging of a friend, I did a Blab (edit: site is no longer available) about the app development process. Blab is kind of like an interactive YouTube. This was the first time I had done a video (live or recorded).
- I dove into Social Media more and met a bunch of new people from around the world, which led to some calls about potential work (including a Skype call to a couple people in the United Kingdom).
- I wrote my first project proposal.
- I rewrote my site with new content and recoded it on a new framework.
- I moved my site from shared hosting to a VPS. Diving into servers was a new experience for me (especially on the level required to set one up).
- In November, I sent a response to a Craigslist post regarding a possible web development job in Grand Rapids. This has led to a couple projects with the possibility of full time employment at the end of the projects.
These are just a few of the events that relate to "new." A lot more happened and each of these events contain a multitude of stories and lessons within them.
To answer the question of how the one word worked out for the year - it had a greater impact and direction than I could have imagined. God did some incredible things throughout the year. There were ups and downs, highs and lows, and through it all, God was and still is faithful. He gave me a word and He followed through on it.