Edition #180: In and Out for 2025
Goal setting was out, but now it's back in (with the help of this workbook). Plus, life as a Millennial stage mom, the best poem for a new year, and a haunting Tiny Desk.
Well well well, what do we have here? Another fresh calendar year at our disposal! We might be a week and change in, but anytime prior to 25 January is New Year territory if you ask me. I spent my final four days of 2024 deep in reflection and goal setting mode with the help of an incredible tool that I’m going to write about (and link out to) in today’s essay. On New Years, I went to a big group dinner followed by a party that ended as the sun came up. I proceeded to pretend to be on vacation for a handful of days thereafter, sharing my personal space and energy stores with reckless abandon.
Finally I am back to earth, back to myself, and feeling more energized about the year ahead than I’ve felt in a long, long time. So let’s get to it!
A Note From the Editor
To start; some context. I am a recovered Type A, goal-setting Girl Boss. And yes, I mean Girl Boss in the worst, most quintessential way. From the time I left for college at 17 to the decade that followed, I was barreling through life, chiefly concerned with reaching my goals, achieving upward mobility, and outrunning the demons I didn’t know were chasing me; unconcerned with who I stomped on along the way. This was a girl who took pride in her ability to Frank Underwood any professional situation, who had a team of 18 people working directly under her at 23 years old, who went to Orange Theory Fitness six times a week and sprinted so hard on the treadmill that the doctor said her shin bones were splintering off like a sucked-on toothpick.
You can imagine where this all goes—it doesn’t end well. Lots of drinking, lots of steel emotional walls. As I softened, started therapy, started writing, started processing the destructive habits I’d formed over the span of a full decade, my relationship with goals started to shift. I would still set them, but I could no longer deny that I was mostly using them as a war tactic against myself. Set 20 goals, hit 75% of them, feel like shit. Look at a big, heaping list of goals, feel full-body dread, use that fear as gasoline to power me through. Not a great setup.
Last year, I made the conscious choice to be loosey-goosey with it. Lots of questions, lots of wandering, very few concrete plans. I let myself get lost, no massive goals, observe, feel, wade through the muck, sit with myself. It is precisely what I needed. This year, I’m in a different space. I feel ready to go. I know who I am, I know where I am. So when I found this 2025 annual planning workbook I thought, let’s see. Can the recovered Girl Boss revisit goal setting in a new, healthier way? Am I at the point where I can look at what I want from life and sit with it it, stop mistaking other people’s expectations for my own desires?
The workbook is supposed to take you three days to complete, about an hour a day—it took me four because I like to take my time. I was most anxious about the final day, when you write out your action plan for the first three months of the year. To my surprise, that day was just as energizing as the days prior, because the approach is different than anything I’ve tried in the personal improvement realm. You aren’t writing out arbitrary goals based on what you think you should do or achieve in any given year, as I had in years prior. Instead, you’re going deeper within yourself, parsing out what you value, what you want your life to look and feel like, and then setting goals to get you closer to that vision.
Even the goal-setting approach itself is different. For each goal you set, you’re asked to justify it—how will this improve your life? What challenges might arise when taking action on this goal, and how you will handle them? I found this especially illuminating—all of my anticipated challenges were centered around being frustrated or discouraged in the wake of learning something new. A great thing to know about yourself; even better to come up with strategies to combat those inevitable challenges as they arise (for me: sharing my progress with people I love, celebrating small wins, taking breaks when needed).
At the end of all this, I had a workbook with clear set plans for the next 90 days, but more than that, I had a clear feeling. When I close my eyes and think about my life, it feels big, bright, expansive. The details are hazy, but the feeling is there. And now that I know the feeling, I know what the feeling isn’t. That is the crucial starting point for knowing what to say yes to and what to say no to this year.
With all that in mind, here are my Ins and Outs for 2025:
In: Listening to your body
The body is supremely intelligent. Those little feelings you get in your stomach? A natural hesitation, or the quickened-pulse excitement? Those are the signs to tune in for. The more you listen and respond to them, the more loud and clear they become. Try it out for a week or two and see what I mean. This year, I am making it a point to tune in to my body before my mind.
Out: A goal or to-do list item that triggers dread
Ever read your own to-do list and got cold sweats? A chill up the spine? Worse, ever reviewed your annual goals list and felt like someone, somewhere, was walking over your grave? Same. If it feels bad, don’t strive for it. Simple. I realize there are exceptions—”do taxes” is never going to be a fun item on the to-do list—but there are typically a good handful of items that we don’t really need to do, or that we don’t really need to do today. If it fills you with dread, don’t do it. See whether your entire world comes crumbling down.
In: Listening back to your own voice notes
During one of my first sessions with my psychic last year, she called out a few phrases I had used on repeat, including “I just have to force myself to TKTK.” Who said I had to force myself, and why? I started recording our sessions and listening to them back like a podcast, noticing my language and conversational patterns—how often I apologized, said something I was experiencing was stupid or unimportant or not actually a big deal, how many disclaimers I would give, etc.
When I noticed these patterns of speech in myself, I began to notice them in others. It hurt me to hear the people I love speaking to themselves in unkind ways without even realizing it. Language is insanely powerful. You speak your reality into existence, you paint your worldview with your words. Try listening to the voice notes you send to friends and family immediately after sending them. You’ll start to notice your language and the way you’re speaking to yourself and about yourself. I’d bet money on it: this linguistic awareness will change how you communicate.
Out: Gossiping
This one goes hand-in-hand with the former. When I started noticing my language, I started noticing how often I was speaking negatively about other people. The urge to gossip coincided with my move to a small expat town in Costa Rica; perhaps I was just assimilating to the locale. Either way, I didn’t want this to calcify into a habit.
I spoke to a wise friend about my urge to gossip and she gave me some useful context. The desire to gossip stems from our primal constraints—our tribal needs to fit in, to not be rejected by the group. If everyone’s talking about X, we will join in talking about X. Still, our language we use impacts our reality. Everything compounds. When we talk shit with regularity, we train ourselves to see the bad in others, and this bleeds into the way we see ourselves. That is why I’m bringing more awareness to my words in 2025.
In: Trading and bartering
Bring back the trade, the barter, the I’ll give you three apples for a piece of fish. Or I’ll do this piece of creative work for you in exchange for a spot at your retreat, a photoshoot in exchange for an astrology reading. We all have special talents, why not use them as currency?
Out: Investing in stuff over yourself
You know that strange form of mental math we do when spending money? Spending $120 on a massage might give me pause—a little pricey, is it necessary?— but $120 on a dress is easy. Therapy is expensive, but I really need that leather bag.
This year is about shifting the mindset around spending so that investing in myself becomes the thing I never think twice about. Acupuncture? A facial? A massage, an online course, a retreat, a book? Absolutely. If what I’m investing in has the potential to leave a lasting impression on my body, mind, or soul and won’t bankrupt me, then it’s an easy yes. The dress, the giant Amazon order, the bag? Pause and evaluate, then decide.
_____
Cheers, my dears, and as always thanks for reading. I am still coming back down to Earth from an intense first week of the year, so I’m planning to take it really easy this weekend. A little surf, a little yogilates, a little sunset on the beach, picking up my box of produce at the farmers market, watching a movie in bed. Have an easy weekend. Make yourself some soup, don’t set an alarm, cuddle with a cute animal of your choice.
Three Pieces of Content Worth Consuming
Life as a Millennial Stage Mom. This piece managed to hook me in with the juicy details of the NYC theatre kids and parents set, but what I especially appreciated was the humanity the author started with and came back to. Take, for example, this sweet line about the vast, inexhaustible imagination of childhood: “June’s day is filled with more idea and schemes than I produce in a year.” We live in such wild times, and the way those times are transposed onto our children is fascinating. I do not envy the unyielding schedules of these children and their parents. Also, I had no idea the peak window for a child actor to “make it” is between the age of 7, when they can read lines, and 13.
i am running into a new year: A Poem. I have this poem memorized. I’ve had it handwritten and taped up on my mirror. I’ve typed it out on a typewriter, printed it, framed it, and given it as a gift on a fourth date. I’ve read it aloud to a group of women at a writing workshop I taught at a friend’s intuitive eating retreat. And, more recently, I read it to a handful of new girlfriends in my backyard—evening bugs chirping, candles burning. It never gets old.
You’ll Never Get Off the Dinner Treadmill. I’m endlessly fascinated with the ways people approach dinner. As an adult, my mother admitted that she woke up every day dreading cooking dinner for the family when we were growing up. My sister, on the other hand, cooks the most delicious, fairly involved meals for her family every evening with ease. I fall somewhere in between—dinner is sometimes a ritual to relish in, other times, a problem to be solved. This week, I ordered a few meals from a local plant-based meal service and having those options on deck was a nice way to alleviate some of the dinner pressure.
Perhaps You Should… Watch Hoizer’s Tiny Desk
I was once in a tiny, eight-person bar in Tokyo that had a TV playing exclusively Tiny Desk concerts. Hoizer’s performance yanked me in and sent me down a deep rabbit hole. To hear this voice emerge from a human mouth is riveting. He hardly speaks between songs as is customary for Tiny Desk performances, adding to the intrigue. His fingers on that guitar, dear God! After watching this, I read the lyrics to a few of his songs and remember what pure poetry they are, especially this one. Beautiful, haunting. What a talented man.
**Bonus Content** (Adult Life Expectation vs. Reality)
LOL, this is too accurate. Does quicksand even exist, and why aren’t twins pulling the old switcheroo more often?!
Also, a very sweet song, if I were in New York I could be all over this new spot, if I were in Seattle I’d be all over these gorgeous floating saunas. This has been me on several occasions, and a reminder that we don’t know anything, LOL.
A Quote From A Book You Should Read:
“There are years that ask questions and years that answer.”
-Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston