Yeah, you read that right. I’m not making any 2025 goals or resolutions for writing or otherwise. At least, I’m not making any in the traditional sense with big ambitions and time frames.

The last six months have been hell on the personal front, and everything in life has suffered from it. I don’t have it in me to think about the future and ambitious plans right now. I barely have it in me to make it through some days currently. There’s a lot of work I need to do on myself.

In times like this it’s okay to step back and say, “I can’t give when there’s nothing in my cup left to give.” However, that doesn’t mean I want to be completely lifeless for the foreseeable future. I still want to poke at some things, even if it’s potentially half-hearted and sporadic poking. Working on myself is about more than being okay again. It’s also about finding myself, on rekindling more than one passion that has been left behind. If I have to poke around without direction or goals to find them, then it still counts for something.

Now, admittedly, even I’m not totally okay with myself not making a single goal for 2025. I still fall into the trap of beating myself up for not being productive in this go-go world. It feels like I am wasting time that I will never get back, that I am missing something important, that I’m lazy and unmotivated and so many other things. It’s hard to pull out of the mindset that rest is okay, especially when your life is in shambles.

But rest is okay, and sometimes essential.

With the help of a witchy mentor and a writer friend on Twitter the other day, I realized something important. It’s easy for me to close myself off to good things, and easy for me to overlook the good that I have experienced. I achieved some pretty great things in 2024 that I explored in my 2024 Publishing Wrapped post, even though they were minor compared to other’s agented success, book deals, insane travels, or work accomplishments. As my writer friend said, “anybody can have goals,” but I’m looking for achievements. I also failed to realize that my small achievements were still achievements, and the only one I need to compare myself to is my past me. Any progress at all is still progress. I may not be able to look at the road yet ahead, but I can look at how far I’ve come. For it, too, was once a long road ahead. From there it’s one foot in front of the another, no leaps and bounds necessary.

So maybe I’ve spent a week wracking my brain over what I should do with 2025 for it to lead to a whole a lot of nothing still. That’s totally okay. I don’t have to have goals, I don’t have to hold myself to any one thing. It’s okay if the best I can do right now is rest and heal from an incredibly hard six months. Maybe in the process of following the ebb and flow of my energy, poking at things that have long been neglected or forgotten, I’ll find some direction. Either way, I’m going to try to not beat myself up for potentially doing nothing for the foreseeable future.

It doesn’t mean I’m giving up on this blog, the #WWReborn flash fiction segment, or any of my social media. But it does mean my interaction on them could be lacking some yet. None of this is also to say I can’t one day in a week, a month, a few months from now change my mind and my direction for 2025. For now, though, there are no goals, no resolutions, and no grand plans for this new year.

There is only rest and honoring my own energy.

And that is okay.

What are your 2025 goals? Do you have a grand plan for the year or are you taking it one day at a time like me?