Let This Be The Year
Finding inspiration for 2026 in looking back and celebrating a few small but meaningful steps
I’m taking a little tour through this past year and I’m reminded of something I often tell my clients…that you don’t notice change and growth much along the way, so stopping to look back can be very surprising. Sometimes my role in our conversations is to remind people of where they were six months or a year or five years ago, so they can see the leap from where they’ve been to where they are now, and recognize a process in its blossoming. That moment, when I see the light of realization turn on in someone’s eyes, might be among the most rewarding aspects of my job. It’s harder to do it for yourself, but it’s worth trying. Here are some things I feel good about when I consider 2025 from beginning to today, the last day of the year:
I started my Substack!
I think I was passively enjoying Substack for about two years before I finally found the courage to begin. I had an amazing ADHD coach who helped me do it, so I can’t take all the credit, but actually my biggest win is that I kept at it. I stopped sometime in the summer because my routine was out of whack, and I regret that I left the fields fallow for so long, but I definitely turned a new corner when I actually started it up again in the fall rather than leaving it by the wayside piled on top of the many many other projects I have begun in enthusiasm and ditched in a disillusionment of my own making. I have posted 20 pieces, and I’m proud of them.
More importantly, I’ve learned a lot from writing them. I completely agree with Joan Didion’s assertion that she writes to find out what she thinks. I find it very clarifying and empowering to sort through the noise in my mind and discover, often through many edits, a related set of ideas that I find interesting and important. And sharing this with my readers is a huge source of motivation for me. I love getting comments and feedback and questions, and generating engagement.
So, if you’ve been sitting here wanting to write but holding off for one reason or another, this is my bit to encourage you to jump off the fence and roll in the mud. It’s fun, it’s exhilarating, and we need your voice! I didn’t think anyone needed to hear what I had to say, but just doing it changed my mind. Even if only one person responds to a post (I see you, David R., and you are the best!!), that’s enough for me to keep going.
Which brings me to the biggest thank you to everyone who has kept reading and encouraged me to keep going. After one year I have 106 subscribers! I wish I could hug each and every one of you. But for now I will just promise to send out some damn good stuff in 2026. Stay tuned.
I started painting!
I used to draw when I was a kid, and even painted a little, and I got so much joy from it. But my adult life never seemed to have space for that part of me. This year I signed up for a watercolour painting class and I started painting. One thing that inspired me was a very special client of mine who is insanely talented. She often showed me her paintings and there was something about witnessing the translation of her thoughts, ideas and experiences into painted images that really blew my mind, and made me want to experiment with this myself.
Another thing that helped me take the plunge was the inspiration I found here on Substack. I subscribe to a few visual artists and I absolutely love seeing what they are working on. But for me it was a bit like seeing a huge table full of all my favourite foods and not being able to eat any of it. It was gorgeous and fascinating to look at, but it made me feel more and more hungry to be making my own art. I’m still very much a beginner, but I’m so enjoying the learning process that I don’t really care all that much what the final products look like.
Here are some of the visual art Substacks from which I took inspiration this year:
That’s All! And It’s Enough.
How about that? Only two major things. But perhaps the best thing of all is that this now seems like enough to me. I used to promise myself I’d start 6 new hobbies, try 4 new sports and learn 7 new languages every year, or some such nonsense. I’ve learned that being okay with fewer enterprises means avoiding the collapse of all of them. Duh.
There is one other thing that I’m proud of. I won’t go into detail, but it’s a way in which I’ve matured in personal relationships. There’s been a lot of upheaval in and around my life this year, in friendships and family dynamics, and I think through it all I’ve learned some things about myself and learned to let go a bit more. Some parts of us are just habits, and when we look for their explanations we sometimes find that those no longer apply. I started to notice this year that certain unhealthy dynamics in relationships were there because I was acting something out that just wasn’t me anymore. And I learned, through this process, to trust my instincts a little bit more.
This is probably the question that I get most often from my clients - how can I learn to trust my instincts? And unfortunately I have not yet found a better answer than ‘age’. It just happens in time, and it’s always in process, as Aristotle describes when he discusses practical wisdom. You just learn through experience. But you do have to try at least to listen to your instincts in order to learn how to use them better. In other words, you can’t just play it safe and never trust them until they present you with rock solid evidence, which they never will.
So let this be the year! What’s that thing you’ve been wanting to do but have been too timid to take the first step? What exactly are you afraid of? When you figure that out, have a good laugh at yourself and move on. Or don’t even bother figuring it out. Instead look at this image of space, to get a sense of how very small we really are and how insignificant our failures are:
Have a Very Happy New Year, and may December 31st, 2026 have you looking back in awe at what you learned, made or became!
So lovely, Jo. Happy New Year. xxoo
Love this, and you! Happy New Year and looking forward to reading more of your work in 2026. Also, incredible painting! I hope it’s hanging up in your house!