Choosing my word for 2025
For the past five years or so, I’ve eschewed New Year’s resolutions in favour of a word of the year. It is, I find, a gentler way to welcome the year, to push myself to make positive change, to ease into new patterns and routines and habits that better serve me.
My word last year was Other—a seeking word chosen during a really tough time, when I was desperate for change. I wrote during that time about how seeking the Other was a reminder to myself to look deeper, to find the moments and spaces that gave me a sense of depth and magic. But Other had a different meaning I didn’t feel comfy writing about then, which was that I badly need another job that didn’t wreak havoc on my mental health—a change that I made happen a few months later, fulfilling the biggest goal I secretly had for myself this past year. I feel like Other was an apt word for 2024, a word that encompassed all the things I wanted and all the things I did over the past twelve months.
Going into 2025, I’m reflecting on what I learned from all that change and growth. I wrote last year about how 2021-2024 were almost entirely dedicated to getting diagnosed with and then recovering from cancer, and in a way 2024 felt like the first full year of learning who I am after such a life-altering experience: no longer fully focused on recovery, but able to expand my field of view wider and determine what it is I want now. A lot of the shit I took for granted before getting sick (and, let’s be honest, before the pandemic changed the world) doesn’t hold up anymore. At the same time, I’m still not sure what I do want. Sometimes I beat myself up for this indecision or lack of action, but when I look at the timeline I remember that it’s only been a year that my life has really felt like mine again. And—as the whole crux of this Hello Toad thing is about—it’s okay to move slowly.
At the same time, some things have become crystal clear. Some of my biggest takeaways are:
- The thing that makes me feel more fulfilled and accomplished than anything else are my creative pursuits, and I want to prioritise them always.
- The outdoors in general and the forest in particular are the places where I feel the most me, and the more time I spend out there the healthier and happier and more creative I am (see bullet #1).
- No one is going to give me permission to put myself out there—I’m going to have to do it all by myself.
These are all pretty duh statements, because like…duh. But I haven’t been respecting these truths about myself this year, and that really bums me out, and I feel way worse for it. So while there’s been a ton of growth and inner work this year (someone pls pay my therapy bills), there’s also been this direct correlation of not really having an excuse anymore: I know the shit I need to be doing to build the life I want to live, and now I have to actually do it.
Which brings me all the way back to my word of the year.
Like last year, I wanted a word that’s a bit ambiguous so it could summarise all my different competing feelings and hopes for 2025. I want to get outside more; I want to continue building towards the future Mike and I envision for ourselves; I want to create more art; I want more Movement. In my body, in my creativity, in my day-to-day, I want to move. I want to do things that fire me up, I want to be places where I feel inspired, I want to explore and dig and discover.
Bringing in movement means putting it first. It means leaning hard into boundaries around my job and also around the excuses in my own brain. It means doing things for the sake of doing them. It means doing them in defiance of a world that doesn’t really want any of us to do anything. In defiance of a world that makes it so incredibly easy to be hopeless. It means not letting the rot win.
So, Movement. Internal and external, physical and emotional, an act of rebellion and allowance, an act of seeking and demanding and grace and rest (because resting is a movement too). A year of moments, I think: snapping photos in the woods, dancing in the kitchen, writing in the dark. Moving and stretching and growing and surviving.
Happy New Year.