2024 Retrospective and 2025 Intention
The time has come yet again to look back on the previous year and see how I did with my intention and set a new one for this year. I really slow-rolled this retrospective this year because there was a lot happening right at the beginning of January.
In 2024 I wanted to focus on discipline. Doing the thing even though I maybe didn't want to because I knew that the culmination of work was worth it. Being satisfied with the work I did today because I knew that this work was cumulative. One step in a long journey. And overall, spoiler alert, I was pretty proud of myself!
What went well
I co-authored a book
I went into 2024 with a pretty clear vision of my intention, and had gone through the ups and downs of figuring out how I liked and needed to spend my time.
So it felt really serendipitous when a friend reached out and asked if I was interested in co-authoring a book on human-centered design and building cities sustainably. I said yes immediately and in all caps (so it was more like YES). With a truly bananas amount of exclamation points (YES!!!!). I was very excited about it, in case you were missing the subtlety.
I spent a few months this year going back and forth with the other authors working on our chapter and being thoroughly ecstatic that I got to work on this with a bunch of smart people. I'll be sharing more details as I'm able, but I'm happy to say we're moving along on it nicely!
I connected with nature
I spent a lot of my free time out at my local park, walking around and taking pictures. I went paddle boarding. I hiked. I gardened. I watched the bees make their way around my yard. I took a class on native plant identification. I watched the birds in the yard. I did nature journaling with a local group. It was really wonderful and I got the chance to spend a lot of time outdoors with other people who are as inspired by nature as I am. I also got to spend time in nature alone—listening, thinking, waiting, watching, drawing. The time I spent this year connecting with nature made me realize that is a specific thing that brings me a lot of joy. I'm absolutely mesmerized by the patterns of a pinecone I find on a trail. To me it is a treasure. This year really helped solidify that.
I connected others with nature
I got to put my first art piece in an exhibit, which was up during Portland Design Month! That was very exciting for me and I was really proud of it.
I also grew my newsletter by about 20% and actually was disciplined about it and wrote almost every week. I wrote on weeks when I wasn't inspired or when I felt the newsletter wasn't exactly perfect or exactly what I wanted to say. In my mind, sharing something of quality, even if it wasn't perfect, was still good, and better than sitting on it for weeks and weeks. I can always go back and add more or write another article on it if I want to do more.
I gave a talk on how nature can inspire digital design and hopefully got people interested in either going out into nature or pulling that into their digital spaces. You can see the presentation here!
I volunteered at my local park and wrote the monthly newsletter, website updates, and coordinated the free nature education program. This volunteer work brings me a lot of joy and I get to spend time with some really wonderful people.
What could have gone better
Never enough
I think I've probably talked about this before, and this is something that still comes up, although I've been working on it a lot in recent years. There's this feeling that no matter what I do it's never going to be enough. As soon as I've completed one thing the bar is now raised and I must do better. I must do more. There's no time for reflection, celebration, or rest. Nothing is ever enough.
I felt a little bit of that happening in 2024. I would work on my newsletter and feel like it wasn't good enough. I would volunteer but I should've spent more hours or been involved more heavily. Nothing I did felt like enough, even though I think objectively I was working on things that were meaningful to me and I was doing a good job at them.
So I started verbally celebrating when I finished something and forcing myself to talk about it. To be honest I don't like doing it, but I'm trying to be better. Because if the bar is always moving and nothing I do is enough, then it's going to be really hard to find gratification in what I've done. I know that I'll never feel satisfied, and I'm okay with that, but I do think I deserve to feel gratification for good work completed—even if it could have somehow been a bit better given more time, opportunity, whatever.
Over committing
This is another issue that I've always had and started to notice more near the last half of the year. I became overwhelmed with options and things to do and ended up taking on way more than I should have. I felt like I wasn't fully able to focus and wasn't doing a good job managing my calendar which meant I didn't know how much I'd signed on for.
I realized this issue pretty quickly and rectified it, but it was still hard to implement a structure for my day that I was happy with. It would kind of come in cycles. A few weeks I would get it right, then I'd over commit and get panicked again.
This year's intention
For this year, my intention is to let myself be seen. I'm very cat-like in my behaviors: pay attention to me, no not like that, wait come back, stop looking at me! I fear the judgment that comes from attention and from wanting attention, but also want to be seen and share my ideas more widely. So this is the year to try that out. I think the things I want to share at this stage in my life can be impactful for others. I think they can be a force of positivity and connection. And this is morbid but, one day I'll die. I can die with my ideas, art, writing, and voice having been shared, or I can die silently. It won't change the outcome but one way will make me feel like I tried to actually live.