January Vibes, 2024 reflections, 2025 desires

January 20, 2025

I enter the new calendar year with a strong preference to keep things on the down low. For me, this is not a time of year to start new habits or patterns. I don't feel a natural drive to launch new projects.

I have plenty habits, patterns and projects on the go already, that get put on hold during Christmastide. January then is a returning time, not a brand new idea time.

My primary goal in January is to enjoy winter. I love feeling cozy, sleeping (seriously, I love sleeping), reading, drinking hot beverages, relaxing, and reflecting. For a person with naturally hibernating tendencies January is a high holy month.

Through the years January has evolved for me into a month of winter hibernation energy instead of the dominant cultural messaging towards achievement, productivity, and starting new things.

Now that I have a wood stove the temptation is very strong to never leave the house! But that’s actually been true for me since moving to the Sanctuary because there is so much right here - people I love, a home I love, unlimited gardening potential, acres of woods to explore behind the house, and of course, the internet - to satisfy my needs and wants.

I still have stuff I have to do this month. I have paid work. I have school writing. I have a home to keep.

January is not a vacation month for me, but it is definitely a month of rest after the holidays. I aim to keep the calendar mostly empty, very few commitments or plans outside the basics.

The natural world is not oriented towards high productivity and neither am I.

I eagerly anticipate the winter evening hours when the work is done and the darkness feels like a favorite duvet keeping me warm through the night.

my office view at sunset

All day I look forward to being able to return this couch, where I start my days writing, to watch the wood stove burn against the dark night sky. I look forward to cuddling on the loveseat and watching TV with Damien, falling asleep on flannel sheets.

I’ve been walking in the direction of aligning my January actions and expectations with the natural subdued energy of winter for years already. But I have to say now that we are finished raising our kids it’s way easier to do. There are fewer external demands and expectations on me. And I LOVE this.

I look forward to exploring all of this in the salon I’m hosting on seasonal living.

Because of how I approach January (softly) and my overall resistance to our culture’s obsession to have quantifiable outcomes in every aspect of our lives, I place no expectations on myself for New Year’s goal setting or other life strategizing/assessment.

Beach Meadows (a new-to-us beach)

Having said all that, the desire struck me in the early days of January to write out my 2024 accomplishments and highlights. There were no plans to do this but it felt fun and useful to me and so I went with it.

I have a hard time recognizing my accomplishments and my wins (maybe everyone is like this, or maybe that’s my personality) and so seeing them written down felt really good.

I am very clear about my core values. To spend time recalling and reflecting, to see the lines of text grow showing all the ways that I lived out those values, was a satisfying activity.

I did it! I lived out my values and the things most important to me.

But the process was also helpful visually to identify where I want to see movement and growth in my life. (I explain what I mean by this later in this post.)

My process

The way I did this journaling was to write lists of accomplishments & highlights from different areas of my life.

A long time ago, I had identified eight compass points for my life:

creative
intellectual
work
body
spirit
relationships
home
adventure/travel

This journal session evolved a little differently and I didn’t use these exact headings, but close to it.

To help me recall the wins and highlights from 2024 I scrolled through my google calendar and my photo archives. I jotted down everything from meals hosted for family and friends to the fact that last year I earned the most money I ever earned in my life. (There was no photo or calendar reminder for that one. I’ve only been working for pay for the last 7 years so my most is not the same as a most for someone with a 25 year career under their belt. Just sayin’.)

Every line item got categorized under a particular heading. This time around I used these headings:

school/career/intellectual
finances
fun/adventure/travel
home building & relationship tending
marriage
writing & publishing
nature
home management & home making
homestead & preparedness

These categories emerged in the recording. As I thought of each highlight, for example: “organizing the apothecary”, I either created a category to put it into or added it to an existing one.

My point is, the listing and categorizing emerged from my life and my doings. And the process revealed themes.

What I noticed immediately in grouping things this way is that some areas of my life have many line items, the list of accomplishments and highlights is long. Other areas, not so much.

My home building & relationship tending category ran into overflow space. (Page 3 in the journal photo above.) I already feel in my heart that this area of my life is strong, home and family specifically are the most meaningful things in my life (core values) and this is obvious in my reflections.

Some of those short sections, for example nature and marriage are very related to others areas and even though I’ve only recorded 4 or so items for each I feel very satisfied with both at the end of 2024.

After writing my accomplishments and highlights, I started a new list on fresh page titled What do I want for 2025?

I didn’t overthink this, I just started writing things.

After I wrote them I color coded the ideas to correspond with the colors I had assigned the categories/themes from my Accomplishments list.

It was this color coding that made the process more visual. And it’s very obvious where I want to see growth in my life.

Most of what I want for 2025 fits under three main themes:

career & work
publishing & writing
homestead & preparedness

Ideally, I would love publishing and writing to be more intertwined with and constitute facets of my work/career. That is a discussion for another day and is the continuation of a blog series currently on hold.

A few things jumped out to me about this reflection process and are the reason I took the time to write a blog post about it.

The first is that I am very satisfied with my home and my core relationships. And this just feels like such a huge life win and contributes to my overall sense of life satisfaction, which is high coming out of 2024.

Relatedly, our move increased both my financial and relational security and that sense of security contributes significantly to my life satisfaction and well-being.

2024 was a banner year for building security and everything related to home. And for a security-seeking, relationship-focused, home-loving person like myself this is huge.

(I have many thoughts here about the injustice of increasing levels of economic, ecological, and political insecurity and inequality in our society. I interrogate my motives and question if I should talk of my own good fortune and fulfilled dreams and desires in this cultural context. I am aware. And I choose to proceed with the telling.)

When I look ahead into 2025 there are things in my life that can exist in maintenance mode. I just need to keep doing what I’m already doing.

Basically, if I didn’t write it down as something I want for 2025, its an area I am satisfied with. These are: finances, nature, home & relationships, home making and management, and health. (TBH, health was never even mentioned in my journaling, only afterwards did I notice the omission.)

The areas I want to see grow or change or experience more of are: career development, writing & publishing, travel/adventure, and homestead & preparedness. The list of things I want to accomplish in the latter is long!

I wrote a summarizing statement in my 2024 reflections.

2024 was the year of coming home. It was the year my desire and search for Home ended.

With that settled it’s time to shift my mental and emotional energies to other goals and desires.

Talking and writing about the things I want is part of the process of making them happen, or more likely to happen, in my life.

So this year I’d like to write more about the work I’d like to do. I also want to publish more, period.

As part of this intention I am hoping to pick back up the Quest for a work “thing” series that I started last winter. I’d also like to share more about my writing and publishing. I have stuff in drafts so we’ll see if I can work it into something coherent for the blog.

This was a bit of a meandering and vulnerable post. For me, talking about the ways in which my life is amazing is more vulnerable than talking about my pain, struggle, and losses.

It’s important to me that I record it on the blog. Ironically, while blogging as a publishing format is dying around me I value my blog more than ever.

When I want to remember something from the last 20 years of my life I visit my blog. Sometimes I’ll use the search function, other times I’ll visit categories, sometimes I’ll bring up the archives and click through month by month.

I don’t have the best long term memory, probably because I rely heavily on writing and photography I haven’t developed that part of my mind capacity. Damien remembers a lot of details from the early years of our life together that have totally escaped me.

Writing my life might be the cause, the remedy, or both of my forgetfulness. Whatever the case, the recording and publishing of my story is super important to me. This post is written and published from that place.

2024 was an amazing year for me. I have no expectations that 2025 should be up and to the right of 2024.

Some amazing things are in store to happen this year, in our family and for me personally. Moving here has started a new chapter in our family story and a new season for Damien and I. Our hopes and dreams for this stage abound.

I hold all that and the knowledge that emergencies, unexpected losses, and possible crises will be part of this year’s story also. Part of my intentions for the year (that list of what do I want for 2025?) is to continue to build our resiliency - in resources and relationship - for these eventualities.

But right now, on this January day, year 2025 I am deeply appreciative of winter’s rest. The wood stove provides a soul-comforting warmth, mere feet away from where I write.

Dad just stopped in to chat about some maintenance he’s doing on our house. (He does our house maintenance!)

Damien’s up in the loft working and we’ve been chatting about the squirrels eating at the bird feeder. Pippin is sleeping at my feet, his soft dark fur radiant and warm in this rare instance of January sunshine.