🧭 Navigating the New for 2025

Subtly seeking sustainability.

Is it just me, or has anyone else not quite landed in the year yet?

I think a combination of having a new year holiday, and jumping back into an unexpectedly busy week on return, has left me feeling somewhat discombobulated that we are already almost at the middle of the month; the first month of a new year no less.

With Christmas decorations still up in the backdrop, I commented to my partner on Friday that, in the past 10 days, I felt like I’d lived 10 years. He protested dramaticism, while I went on to list, day-by-day, all the reasons why I felt a decade had passed since the turn of the midnight hour on New Year’s Eve.

But, such is life. It is filled with all sorts of twists and turns, celebrations and commiserations. And we must allow space for them. Which, in part, is what I am writing to you about today.

Towards the end of last year, I already knew something would need to change for 2025. For a little too long, my days were crammed full of work (often stressful) and side projects (which, fun and exciting as they may be, are still work, and the kind that often require me to be at a laptop). While I will always cling to reading in bed before sleep, even if just a few pages, true rest felt like a rarity.

Often my diary would feel full of things that I needed to get to, to get ticked off, rather than things to enjoy and embrace. I don’t think this was a reflection of the activities themselves (‘tis after all my favourite time of year), but rather how I was feeling more generally. I started to Google symptoms of burnout, wondering if anything about what I was feeling mapped onto the buzzword de jour, then laughed with friends wondering the same thing as we acknowledged in a sigh of acceptance that, oh, aren’t we all!

Others around me, dare I say those more sensible, would tell me I’m simply trying to do too much. Trying to fit too much into the day; into life. Which is something I hate to be told given that:

1. Life is short and I want to squeeze out of it everything I can

2. I’m currently in the privileged position of living in London, with a partner and a stable salary, without kids or elders to care for, and so if I can’t juggle all my interests and creative pursuits now, when can I?!

While I consider time management to be one of my strengths, feeling confident in maximising the hours in the day and being able to avoid procrastination when I know what I’m trying to get done, what I haven’t mastered is the balance of energy - which I think is often where the problem lies.

Having the time to squeeze in a long list of outputs in a day doesn’t mean having the mental or physical energy to do so - especially when the inputs to boost that energy are minimal. It meant the things I wanted to do were becoming less fun, and I was missing the simple small pleasures that make life so rich. As I dipped into extracts of my journal from last year over Christmas, this became even more apparent.

I wrote in the autumn of wanting to feel like I could buy and read newspapers on a Sunday. But harking back to point 2 above - literally if I can’t already do that now, when can I?! And one of the things I enjoyed most about the Christmas break was the luxury of spending an hour - sometimes more! - reading a book in the cosiness of the sofa. A few years ago that was often the mainstay of my evenings, and I miss it. Yet quite simply it is I who has the power to bring it back.

But, more time for inputs means less time for outputs.

Something’s gotta give, especially with new things on the horizon in these coming weeks and months that I know will need both time and energy - not least a change of team at work, healthcare appointments, and a step forward on the property perusing front.

I don’t know what this will mean in its entirety yet - the planning pages of my Project You Journal still need a bit of work! - but I do know that I don’t want to stop doing anything, especially when it comes to side projects that really offer me a particular zest for life. That said, I’m aware I need to do less in order for it to be sustainable. I haven’t figured out my word of the year yet, but as I write this I think sustainability may not be a bad one!

Looking at the path ahead… (here from Lamporecchio, Tuscany).

And so, for

The Navigation

, I’ll be showing up here a little less, reverting back to the original schedule of twice a month from February (the two year anniversary of this publication of mine!). It may stay that way for the rest of the year, or maybe just a few months until I rev up with another idea to share, but for now it feels like a more sustainable approach to writing here.

As mentioned last week, Career Compass is coming to a close (don’t miss

Jillian Bybee

’s words of wisdom as the finale interviewee) but I’m incredibly grateful to the 12 women who have shared their journeys over the past 12 months. While Little Black Book started as a more frivolous experiment last year, you, dear readers, seem to rather like it, so I’ll be keeping that end of month round up, and adding a new section for reading, on account of the decision to close Cultural Compass after 22 issues.

I’m hoping this will allow me to focus more on essays, which is where I really want to develop my writing abilities further. I have so many ideas that have been buzzing around for the longest time and haven’t been addressed (due to lack of time and/or energy!) and they deserve some love this year. I’ll be sticking with the themes of musings, meanderings and methods, on rotation for each essay post, so the ethos and structure of The Navigation will still very much be in place.

Next week I’ll be back with something on my meanderings through Tuscany, where I brought in the new year (there’s been a few little peeks on Notes), before January’s Little Black Book (which will potentially be a bumper Dec/Jan combo as I took a break at Christmas). Expect me in your inbox fortnightly thereafter.

I’ll still be mooching around Substack to read and comment and share all the brilliant work here; I’ll just not be trying to push myself to keep up a weekly delivery of something new.

I’m sure it’ll not make all that much difference to you, for one email to drop out here and there, but let it not go unsaid (though I hope I say it often) how grateful I am for all the reading you’ve done this past year as I did ramp up to weekly, plus all the commenting, sharing, collaborating - it’s truly been wonderful. 💗

As I write, hot coffee next to me and a thick frost covering roofs and branches outside the window, life looks and feels still. Its nice. I’m excited to embrace more of this peacefulness this year. Not by presenting as a new version of myself, overhauling all I am and how I do, but by making tweaks to approach things in new ways, so that it all feels a little more sustainable.

And now, in case this has all felt a bit ‘woe is me’, let me turn the tables to you and ask, is there anything you want to approach in a new way this year? Where might you be subtly seeking space and sustainability?

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