Happy New Year, everyone!

2025! Can you believe it?!

I still remember being 15 years old, ringing in 2000 with a dixie cup of champagne in my best friend’s basement. To thing 25 years has elapsed since in wild!

Former New Years Experiences

I love New Years. It’s such an interesting moment of energy where it feels as though anything is possible. A reset, if you will.

Throughout my 20’s all of my New Years’ were spent out on the town. The most notable being 2009 when my girlfriends and I went to a big party at the Constitution Center in Philadelphia. We spent the night dancing and then went to the Mummer’s Parade the next day. It’s probably the most memorable New Years of my entire life to this point.

And there have been many New Years’ over the last decade plus that share that same energy. Dancing until my feet ache. Drinking until the night turns into a hazy, glitter soaked memory.

Eventually, my New Years celebrations became going to a friend or family member’s house where we’d play games and have dance parties in the kitchen with all the kids. A much different kind of New Years but equally as fun.

In recent years, I haven’t even made it to midnight. My husband and I usually fall asleep by 9pm. But this year, I stayed up into January 1st and did some very serious reflection.

A New Approach to New Years

The last five years have been filled with huge, lifechanging events. Everything from buying a house to getting married to quitting my job. And because this is a milestone year (2025), I’ve been feeling this call to go inward.

Even though December has been super busy, in the moments when I wasn’t traveling or doing some holiday related activity, I felt…quiet. Reflective. Even though I wasn’t sitting down and organizing or making official my thoughts and feelings on paper, I was starting to plant the seeds of what I want this year to look like.

However, instead of hard launching myself into the New Year with a diet or writing routine or workout schedule on January 1st…I bought myself a planner.

That’s right. That’s the only thing I did. I bought a planner. A really nice one at that.

And on January 1st, I didn’t go for a 10000 step walk or erase carbs from my diet or start some ridiculous resolution that I’ll never end up sticking to. I opened my planner and began to fill in my month.

I picked only four achievable goals for the month of January along with four priorities to be completed during the month. And then, I started looking at the days. Pilates classes, book edits, TpT resources. I put in the time to give myself a schedule because at that moment, that’s what felt achievable. And when I was done, I felt so motivated to do the “next right thing”, so to speak, which was to put my planner away until the next day when I would get started on what I had…well…planned.

It’s About Achievable Goals

I didn’t sprint into the New Year energized by a ton of motivation. Actually, I felt the exact opposite. I spent the liminal space between Christmas and New Years in my pajamas taking naps and reading books. So, to say I was going to clean up my life on January 1st felt like a joke.

Instead, an easing into the New Year by making a plan with small tasks for each day that will help me toward my goals has created that spark of motivation that helps me get things done.

Some days, we have to rely on discipline. That’s just the truth. But I’m not piling on a ton of new habits. I’m not expecting to be some shiny new version of myself. I like me. But there are things I want to achieve that need to be broken down into smaller bites.

There’s something empowering about knowing that you don’t have to get everything done exactly right on January 1st. You can use this time to rest and reflect and plan.

Final Thoughts

That’s it for now, friends.

I am wishing you a New Year of health, wealth, and happiness.

Until next week.