2025: The Great Big Year

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Six years ago, over two thousand days ago, we were on the precipice of a global pandemic. COVID happened. Then a bunch of weird stuff happened, a lot of hard things happened, a bunch of changes happened and somehow here I am today better than ever.

Back To the Future

It’s been a year since I’ve written a blog, and I can hardly believe what life is like now. One day I’m writing a burnout memoir without an ending, and then the next I think maybe I’ve found the end of the relative rainbow.

If I had been in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure at the end of 2024 and a time machine dropped me off in my current reality, it would seem as crazy to me as 1700’s Napoleon on a 1980’s water park slide. That’s how much has changed in the last year.

Time Machine Backward

First, a quick look back. I upended my career in 2021 and joined the great resignation, abruptly and with a Brene Brown addiction.  The next couple of years was an adventure, full of discoveries and experiments. I took a sabbatical, started two consulting businesses, went full-time casual in more ways than one, learned Zumba, wrote a song, climbed a mountain, got “mildly depressed” and then undepressed. I did all the things.

It was the big undoing followed by the big doing. There were more full circle moments in the last few years than I can remember. It started to get eerie, like a portal had been opened.

I turned fifty last year, and maybe that’s just what happens when you are fifty. Maybe there is an invisible leveling up where your past comes back to you and you reckon with it. You forgive yourself, you thank yourself, you laugh at how short life really is and how some things don’t matter anymore and how some things you thought would pass feel like they will always matter. Have I been Scrooge visited by ghosts of Christmas past, present and future? Some days I really wondered.

The First Big Change

In a butterfly wing moment, I started a new job at the beginning of 2025. It came to me because I started a blog in 2021 that led to a new career and a speaking opportunity on a panel with a recruiter who reached out to me last year with the perfect next step at the exact right time. If you give a mouse a cookie… Or in my case, if you give a girl a new path, she’s gonna wanna try it. (This is a children’s book reference, for those who haven’t read a bedtime story in the last decade.)

Is This Better?

David Sedaris makes me laugh. I’m amazed by how enjoyable it is to read his journal entries. He has written books that are literally (pun intended) just his journal entries. I lean on stacks of my journals as way to find patterns, mark the moments and track progress.

Let’s take a look:

November 14, 2024: Everything seems a little weird right now and not as grounded. A bit untethered, floating, moving. My eating is kind of crappy.

November 26, 2024: Tonight I felt like crying.

December 2, 2024: I said "yes" to the job!

December 10, 2024: Ate a sweet potato for lunch and went to Zumba!

One Year Later….

November 29, 2025 – I have noticed the last few days that I have the least anxiety and stress I’ve ever had at this time of year. Eating healthy.

December 15, 2025 – Someone I hadn’t seen for a year told me, “You look a lot younger than last year.”

December 31, 2025 – It’s been a really good year.

Home is Where the Heart is

In some ways, 2025 was like going home. Actually, in a lot of ways. And maybe that’s the point.

I went back to the type of job and industry I had been trained in but with a whole new perspective, renewed energy and armed with new personal and professional skills. My work energizes me and I look forward to it.

Four years after I cut our income in half, we bet on ourselves and bought a bigger home, moved, remodeled and sold our old home. This was a need for many years, the resolution to cognitive dissonance in our lifestyle and family. It just wasn’t fitting us, literally and metaphorically. Moving was a fresh start, a clean out, a large weight removed and a dream realized, even with the work and resources required to make all of it a reality. Coming home and working from home is now a source of peace. The move was a chance to reset so many things. Even the cats are happier.

I embraced being fifty years old, including the reality of aging. I hired a nutritional coach to try a new way to battle menopause weight gain and to build healthier, lasting habits. This is a work in progress, but I have learned a lot about what to eat and when to help reduce bloating and lose some weight instead of constantly gaining it.

I worked on strengthening the important relationships in my life. Time spent here is never wasted and pays exponentially in contentment, love and enjoyment of life. And, as J. Lo sang, “Love don’t cost a thing," although she clearly wrote this before having teenagers.

Advice from Your Mom

If it seems I have everything figured out, I don't. I'm eating Cheetos as I write this. But here is some of my go-to foundational advice I give myself.

1. Action brings clarity.

2. Healthy things grow.

3. Sometimes doing nothing is the right answer.

4. Listen.

5. Be a learner, including building new habits.

6. Be true to yourself and your values.

7. You can’t eat like a teenager when you’re fifty.

8. Reduce the noise and focus on what you can control.

9. “All you need is love.” – The Beatles

10. It feels good to be challenged, needed and productive.

11. Change can be just what you needed.

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I'll leave you with a page of quotes from my journal. Happy 2026!