In 2025, I am carrying on.
Alternate words for this year included persistent and engaged; neither felt as appropriately salty about the general state of things as *carrying on* does.
This year, I have a lot of goals and intentions, all within the broader theme of doing my own thing while the world quite literally burns around me. (And I do know how privileged I am to spend any, if not most, of my time simply ignoring what’s happening in the world around me.) But I want to approach each of these goals as opportunities to learn: new theories, new skills, new perspectives. Maybe I’ll even learn some of them in person, instead of on forums and blogs and dizzyingly fast videos on Instagram.
In the coming months, I will keep living and keep learning and keep making my little piece of the world a better place to be, for me and for others. I want to do this in a lot of ways, but after taking the first few weeks of the year to consider them all, jotted down in my notes app and on scraps of paper and across the whiteboard in my home office, these are what stand out:
Grow flowers.
It turns out I looove gardening.
I even like weeding. I think that’s how you know you really like to garden. I have 2 areas I’m starting from scratch this year (maybe 1 in the fall and 1 in the spring?) and I am so excited to think about what should live in these spaces. I also want to revisit a few plants I put along the back of the house last spring, because I’m not sure I love how they look as part of the whole now that they’ve grown a little bit.
The real learning moment here is a huuuge garden to the south of our house I inherited from the previous owners. Gorgeous peonies, more daisies and lilies than I know what to do with, and kinds of alliums I didn’t know existed before they popped up our first spring in the house. I adore the flowers. I hate that the garden is a square. I want to learn more about landscape design and how I might make the garden visually appealing from the house, the front yard and the road. It’s certainly not a project for this year alone, but I do want to start thinking about it, including how I might incorporate raised beds for fruits and veggies.
Nourish my body.
Not necessarily for right now, but for the next 10, 20, and 30+ years.
I know what’s a healthy food and what’s not, more or less. But I’m not very aware of what I’m putting in my body beyond this. I want to learn a little bit more about what my body needs, when, and how much of it I should be eating. I’m not going all in on tracking my macros or anything but I’d like to understand what a macro is.
Like how I look.
In the sense that I want the clothes I wear to look and feel like me.
I’ve been taking a picture of my outfit every time I get dressed for a couple of months and it’s helping me see what I like on me and where my wardrobe could benefit from a few updates. Creating a just slightly polished loungewear collection is my biggest goal in this category. I spend a lot of time in loungewear and athleisure because I want to be comfortable while working from home. But I also want to feel like I can hop on a call with a client or run an errand on lunch without needing to change.
Fashion, generally, is not one of my interests or strengths, but I’m hoping a few new Substack subscribes and Instagram follows will inspire me, including Allison Bornstein and Chloe Lee.
Create community.
This is by far the hardest one on the list. It’s probably the most important.
The last few years, I’ve let watching people’s Instagram stories be a substitute for asking them what’s going on in their lives. I’ve always known it’s not the same—not even close—but as I attempt to spend less time on social media and my friends choose not to put their kids’ faces on the Internet, I’ve found I know very little about what the people I care about are up to lately. It doesn’t have to be that way. It’s really easy to make group chats and everyone has to eat, so you might as well do it together. But gathering is a habit, and those don’t form overnight.
This goal is a little different because I think it will include learning from friends what works for them at this point in our lives and maybe even making a few new ones.