We’re All Making This Up
Why January is optional—and clarity takes its time
I’ve never agreed with New Year’s resolutions. They feel like unnecessary pressure—and honestly, that’s the last thing I need. Instead, I like to create a short mantra for the year. Think of it as a tagline. A simple phrase that describes what I want to invite into my life and how I want to move through it.
Last year’s mantra was: I cultivate peace as much as possible in my life.
I used it as a compass when things felt chaotic or out of my control. In the middle of an unwinding, I’d pause and ask myself, What would it take for me to feel more peace right now? Whatever the answer was—that’s what I aimed to do. Sometimes it meant stepping back. Sometimes it meant saying no. Sometimes it meant choosing softness when everything in me wanted to push.
Maybe you felt this too, but for me, this year didn’t arrive as a clean storyline. It came in pieces. In movement and pauses. In moments of certainty followed by long stretches of not knowing. I wrote about grief and recalibration, about travel and stillness, about losing my footing and finding it again somewhere unexpected. If there was one truth I kept returning to—again and again—it was this: clarity doesn’t come from adding more. It comes from learning what to carry, and what to finally put down.
Most people don’t fail because they don’t try. They fail because they try to carry everything at once. Every January, we pile it on—more habits, more goals, more versions of who we’re supposed to become. It looks ambitious. Responsible. Like we’re finally getting it together. But then February rolls in. The noise fades. The lists disappear. Not because you’re lazy. Not because you don’t care. But because focus is a rare currency—and time, despite how we treat it, isn’t endless.
So many of the stories I shared this year were really about that tension. About what happens when life pulls you in too many directions at once. About the quiet exhaustion of trying to be everything, everywhere, all the time. About realizing that being inspired, busy, or well-intentioned isn’t the same thing as being committed.
That brings me to a question worth sitting with tonight—maybe longer than is comfortable:
If you were only allowed to commit to one thing this year, what would it be?
Not ten things.
Not a vague promise to “do better.”
One.
Because the truth is, this life is shorter than we like to admit. And at some point—who knows when—you’re going to have more heartbeats behind you than ahead of you.
Whatever keeps tugging on your soul and asking to be done deserves more than leftover time and hopeful thinking. Whether it’s a way of living, a creative pull, a relationship with yourself, or a long-postponed truth, it deserves intention. Structure. Follow-through. Not urgency—but seriousness.
This isn’t about hustling harder or reinventing yourself overnight. It’s about clearing the static. Simplifying enough to actually hear yourself think. Choosing depth over diffusion. Fewer promises to everyone else—and one promise to yourself. Fewer distractions. Fewer open tabs in your life.
Next year doesn’t need a longer list. It needs a clearer one. One thing you’re willing to tend patiently. One thing you’ll show up for even after the excitement wears off. One thing you’ll choose again and again, quietly, without applause.
So as the clock turns, consider this an invitation—not to do more, but to do less, fully. Choose the thing that matters. Commit to it properly. Let the rest fall away.
And if you’re struggling to figure out that “one thing” for the entire year, start smaller. Choose one thing for January. Revisit it in February. Because here’s the secret: February is when the Lunar New Year begins. See? We’re all kind of making this up as we go.
We’re closing out the Year of the Snake now, and it does so quietly—but decisively. Snake energy is inward, observant, and strategic. It’s been a year of shedding skins, watching patterns, and letting truths surface without needing to announce them. Much of its work happened beneath the surface. By the end of a Snake year, you often realize you’re standing somewhere new—not because you rushed forward, but because you finally stopped lying to yourself. It’s not flashy growth. It’s precise, necessary, and irreversible.
The Year of the Horse arrives with a very different posture. Where the Snake taught discernment, the Horse demands motion. This is a year of freedom, momentum, and embodied truth—less thinking, more doing. Horse energy favors alignment over obligation and movement that comes from trust rather than force. It asks: Where are you meant to run? What happens when you stop dragging what you’ve outgrown behind you?
This is the handoff. The Snake cleared the clutter; the Horse asks you to move with what remains. One year stripped things down. The next invites you forward. Not recklessly. Not performatively. But honestly. With space in your lungs and truth in your stride. You don’t need a grand resolution or a perfectly worded plan. You just need one clear direction—and the courage to follow it when it finally opens in front of you.