Write My Map Reflection: Weeks 7, 8 & 9

The annual check in.

This is a process I participate in every year, and of all the practices I engage myself in this is probably the one that is the most important for me. I usually take an entire month to go through this part of the process, and there’s a good reason for that. Every year I wonder if I accomplished anything at all in the midst of all the chaos and busyness, and every year I get to the end of the annual review and wonder how I made it through. Processing the weight, the feelings that come up, and allowing myself to release the things I am carrying that do not belong to me, takes me time. And sometimes I need to see the ginormous number of things I participated in directly in my face in order for it to seem real.

In 2024, in spite of being very intentional about “decluttering” so to speak, it definitely feels like I did the most. Overall, I was aligned with my mission throughout the year but I felt myself really wondering if my mission still reflected my heart and growth anymore. That was a feeling I carried with me most of the year, and as I looked back on everything it became clearer that this was the perfect time to go back and review that piece too. It is almost like the universe conspired for this to be a MAP year, because I did need to make updates and redefine things for myself. I made my scribbly notes and looked back at my calendar from 2024, and took a moment to search the internet for sources on some news pieces that felt important for me to note, and started sorting through it all.

The first day of 2025 rolled in, and suddenly everywhere I looked there were posts about “word of the year” or “intention of the year” and “goals for the year.”

I know lots of folks do this so differently, and everyone has their own way of sorting through and really directing themselves for the year ahead. For me, I see the societal pressure to get through “beautiful holidays” and jump right into a declaration for all the changes and goals that we will make, and I just… I simply don’t.

I don’t, not because I don’t feel like I should, or I see no value in having intentions or words or goals for a year. I definitely do value showing up in a time and space with a fair amount of focus and purposefulness.

I don’t show up the first of the year with a declaration of goals or words or intentions as a practice. The pressure to always be busy, productive, “move move move!” is a set up. If my world is chaos (and let’s face it, it is), my brain goes into survival mode. And in survival mode, everything that doesn’t lend itself to my survival no longer matters. It is as though I am alone on an island full of millions of people, desperately clawing for my next breath. Plowing full steam ahead will get me somewhere, that’s what my survival brain says. The problem is that doing so is at the expense of the sacred people and spaces around me.

As a practice, I work to be deliberate in stomping on the brakes and mashing the pause button more regularly these days. The world continues to spin around me of course, but I have to get my bearings and process and release. I am able to show up better and more fully because of it.

The push back I get from doing this can be tough sometimes, it can feel heavy and almost unbearable to pause to take a breath when there are so many who do not have that privilege. The world is on fire and real people are dying from the greed of real people and systems hell-bent on getting ahead no matter who’s graves and livelihoods they decimate. Pausing for a moment is a luxury, inhaling and allowing my nervous system to settle is a luxury, being able to sit down and rest is a luxury. And it is a luxury I fully believe every human should have, because we are human beings.

The messages we receive from every facet of mainstream society tell us that we are only worthy if we earn it, that we must only do something if it serves a capitalistic goal, that some of us are worth more than others. Too many of us have taken this relentless pressure to mean that the messages are right. And it is astounding to me how deeply resentful people are of those who take a moment to catch their breath, how ingrained into the core of our social fabric the idea that worthiness is earned truly is. I wish more people would pause and feel their own heartbeats, ask themselves if that anger is aimed in the right place, question where that fear really comes from. Maybe even hold themselves with a little more tenderness and notice our shared humanity a little more clearly. This is a wish I will have to practice.

Until next time…