DEC 31, 2025

2025 yearly theme reflection: year of the forge

soooo…it’s the end of 2025, which was year of the forge! how did it go?

well, point one was making physical and mental space for creation. to be honest, i didn’t really do this one as well as i could have. on the physical side, i was traveling and moving for virtually the whole year, which made it difficult to have a fixed physical space for creation. on the mental side, i was a little preoccupied (!) with other things (more on that later), so it was a little difficult to prioritize creativity. still, i wouldn’t say this whole point was a wash. for example, i now have a music setup, which is a huge win because it makes me feel like a musician and inspires me to create! i’ve also worked through a huge mental block around originality, which has (paradoxically) given me so much more artistic freedom and energy. so i think i did pretty okay!

the second point was trusting in myself and forging ahead. when i wrote this point at the beginning of the year, it was some variation on caring less about what people think, and it was mostly constrained to my creative projects. but as the year went on, it morphed into something else. if i had to describe it now, i would describe it as “knowing and respecting what i truly want.” i noticed far more of my people-pleasing tendencies, got better at setting boundaries with my partner and my family, and realized how i had been bottling up things i didn’t like because i didn’t know i didn’t like them. to be more *woo*, i took the time to earn my body’s trust and listen to what it has to say. i’m definitely not perfect, but i’m really proud of the progress i made in this department.

the third point was resting in order to create….and oh boy, was this year a rollercoaster in this department. (to be fair, “year of the forge” doesn’t really sound like a resting theme, despite my intentions.) with illness rearing its ugly head in the spring and forcing me to take a gap in the fall, i would not say that i rested intentionally, so much as i was made to rest. but intentional or not, the forced break from school gave me time to work on some creative projects because i was just so bored. so we’ll take it! i learned that one needs energy to make things (duh), but also that creation begets energy in a wonderful kind of way. sometimes i created to rest, not the other way around.

when i sat down to write this reflection, i genuinely thought i would have failed all the points. i was thinking about the swamp of health issues, and i had forgotten about all of the parts of the year that weren’t the swamp of health issues. but now i realize that i got what i wanted out of this theme—a better relationship with myself and my creativity.

cheers to the year of the forge, and here’s to 2026!