Adiós, 2009. It was a year to remember… Now if we could only think of a way to describe it.
On December 31st, NPR’s Andy Carvin asked people on Facebook and Twitter to summarize 2009 in a single word. He reports he received around 5,000 replies in just a few hours, and arranged 500 of the results in a visual cloud on Wordle.net.
Top words describing 2009 submitted to NPR (Wordle.net)
The top choices for words for 2009 include the following:
- Change
- Challenging
- Bittersweet
- Tumultuous
- Awesome
- Exhausting
I think “exhausting” is a great way to describe the year just passed. But I prefer to think positively, so another word that popped up, “educational,” may say it better — in kind of an understated way. We learned that the world is linked into a single economy, and when one part is disrupted, the entire world feels it. We also learned the value of collaboration at all levels to lift our economies and businesses.
What word would you use to describe the year just passed?
