What's your word?

Eat, Pray, Love sits at the top of the reading rack on my stairmaster like a lure. I rarely manage to sit down and read for pleasure, but trapping myself in a continuous state of ascension seems to produce an ideal tri-tasking environment. My own little Climb, Sweat, Read routine.

In the book, the author, Elizabeth Gilbert, travels to Italy, India and Indonesia over the course of twelve months in search of her true self. This evening, as we were nearing the end of our pure pleasure adventure in Italy, she shared a conversation she had with her friend Luca Spaghetti (yes, you read Spaghetti). In this conversation, she explained to Luca that as much as she had fallen in love with Rome, she would never be able to call it home for reasons that were difficult to articulate. Luca suggested that she and Rome simply didn't connect on the same word. Word? Luca suggests that each city and each person can be represented in a single word. Rome = sex, he says. She goes on to suggest that New York = achieve. Los Angeles = success.

So I continued the path of this conversation in my mind. The notion of whittling something massive down to a single word is sort of fun. Washington DC = power. Omaha = flat. Key West = relax. Tokyo = efficient. And then I connected this concept to a post I wrote about a year and a half ago extending one-word descriptions to 101 people in my life and it dawned on me that I had not yet assigned a word to myself.

Hm. One word. That's tough. Not neat. Not sweet. Not soulful because that word belongs to Jen. Not creative (enough). Not dependable, because I forget things like field trip permission slips and fruit trays. Not honest, because I mostly am, but that should be a given, right? Not driven, because sometimes I like to just ride and look out the window. Maybe grounded, but who's to say on what level.

How about thought-full? Not thoughtful like I am likely to make a casserole for you when you're sick or remember to return your phone call, but thought-full as in full of thoughts. Curious in my view of the world. Purposeful with my words. Careful with my actions. I realize this isn't really a word, but that's part of the reason why I like it so much.

What would be your word? What one word best defines you at this moment in your life and why?