May all your verbs ring true in 2024: Long Story Short by Jan Risher

I love a clean slate — and a new year feels so full of potential. 

I also enjoy little rituals that serve to make life more enjoyable. 

For the past six years at the start of the new year, I’ve offered what I call a once-a-year verb service for friends and acquaintances, which is how I came to spend about six hours one evening last week listening to Mozart and assigning verbs as fast as my fingers could do the job.

Basically, via social media, if friends ask for a verb, I provide one. This year, I upped my game and started building my word list a month before the doling out of verbs began. My verb assignage method has evolved through the years. These days, assigning a particular verb to a person is part random and part prayer. I look for verbs that could be interpreted in multiple ways or suggest different meanings or connotations.  

Sometimes all of us just need a cue to serve as a placeholder that reminds us that it’s possible to have a different perspective.

For some, the verb is a short-lived piece of fun. For others, they use the word to center themselves. It’s funny that a word like “untangle” or “lallygag” can do that, but some friends say it helps. 

When it comes to assigning verbs, business is picking up. In the first 24 hours of my social media post announcing The Great Verbage of 2024, I assigned 307 verbs — and counting. And yes, if you’d like a verb, feel free to email me at jan.risher@theadvocate.com, and I’ll do my best to send one your way. 

My new year’s commemorations don’t end there. For several years, I’ve also hosted a women’s vision board potluck brunch on the first Saturday of the new year. Chances are, by the time you read this, I’ll have hosted the one for 2024.

It’s a simple event. The women bring their dishes to share, their open hearts, their old magazines and scissors — and we sit around snipping images, words and letters from the glossy pages. I provide Champagne to toast the old year and the one to unfold. I also provide other practical things, including plates, poster board, glue sticks and a place to spread out. 

Busy hands make for the absolute best conversation, in my experience. I love sitting with a group of women with the most important focus being cutting images and pasting them to a poster board. It’s a lovely party that doesn’t have to happen at the very beginning of the year. I believe that so many people are looking for opportunities to have similar experiences.

If you are thinking, “I could do that,” consider your word for 2024 to be “nudge,” and go for it.

(If you need a few more details: I don’t ask or care what people bring to share. If we have 14 king cakes, we’ll eat king cake, but that has never happened. People end up bringing a variety of food, and the spread is enjoyable. I start my vision board brunch at 11 a.m. We spend the first hour eating and lallygagging. At noon, we toast the preceding year, standing in a circle and saying a short sentence about the year that has just passed. Then, we get to work on the vision boards. Around 1:30 p.m., we toast the year ahead and repeat the circle experience.)

I go into the details of the event to bring home the point that events in your home can be lovely and meaningful without being stressful to host. 

The products we create are helpful to some and fun for others. Regardless, I hope and pray that 2024 is a year of beauty and grace for you and yours. May all your verbs ring true.