2025: What's in and what's out

Hello everyone and welcome to the brave new world of 2025! I don't know about you, but the turn of the new year finds us snowed (and iced) in for the better part of the first week. If you're being impacted by the winter storm, or the crazy wildfires in L.A., I hope you are staying safe and finding needed comfort. I, for one, have been really hit hard with the cabin fever, and this blog is partly an attempt to break out of the doldrums.

The turn of the new year is always a time when people look back on what's happened and look forward to what's to come. My timelines have been chock full of people sharing their "year in review" or making strides toward their New Year's resolution. Well, I didn't really feel up for undertaking some sort of year in review video, and I eschewed resolutions some years ago. (Of course, I do make goals and other plans to harness the renewed energy for change that a new year brings; I just don't call them resolutions 🙂.) So, I missed the moment on those things, as I often do.

I did want to take a moment to share, in a broad sense, what's in and what's out for me in 2025. No, I'm not giving fashion advice or pointing to cultural trends. I'm just picking up on a practice I've seen others do where they share what's in and what's out for them. What's in are the things they want to do more of and what's out is what they want to worry about less, register less and do less in the new year. I appreciate the directness and simplicity it brings to someone's bigger and broader goals to better themselves in the year to come. And I joked, but it does make it more fun to talk about what we want to do more and less of as if they are trends coming in and going out of style.

So, here's what's in and what's out for me in the year 2025:

In

• Journaling

• Photography

• Reading

• Bluesky

• Being intentional with TV time, i.e. if I'm going to watch it, I'm going to watch a specific show, movie, sports event, not just put it on for passive entertainment

• Morning routines

• Intentional budgeting

• Fun trips

• Bike commuting (I can bike to my new job!)

• Walking

• New perspectives

• Doing things because they make me happy, fulfilled and feel purposeful

Out

• Thinking my work is my worth

• Twitter

• Sharing articles on social media without reading them

• Watching YouTube for long periods

• Raging (too much) about things out of my control

• Spending money carelessly

• Obsessing over the news

• Hot takes

• Doing things for the likes, clicks or attention

So that's it, friends. What's in and what's out for 2025. I wish I had a more profound way to end this, but I forgot to mention that writing consistency is in for 2025 while waiting for something profound to write about is out. So this is what you get.

Instead, I'll just pass on this zesty quote from Rilke that I discovered in one of my favorite newsletters: "And now let us believe in a long year that is given to us, new, untouched, full of things that have never been, full of work that has never been done, full of tasks, claims, and demands; and let us see that we learn to take it without letting fall too much of what it has to bestow upon those who demand of it necessary, serious, and great things.”