Gloriously Unnecessary...
December end of year musings and a recent free write, and what if...instead of finishing the year strong, we finish the year gently?
To everyone who is still here reading, first off, thank you. I had the best of intentions to send a monthly Substack back in January and then life and parenting with a full-time job and chronic health issues happened. I won’t tell you how many drafts I started, wrote, and intended to send (okay I will - it’s 15)…I did however relaunch a monthly newsletter that goes out to over 30,000 people at my place of work, with an over 20% open rate. And write nearly 52 blogs. And do Mass Comms for an 8-week-long statewide event, and then do pre, post, and on-site marketing for an in-person event for 2 days for over 800 ppl this fall and many many other marketing things. I don’t have a number for the social posts, but since the past two days were over 2 dozen alone after 365 days I will say a lot for lack of a better word or measurement system. So the writing did happen, just not in the all the places I originally thought/hoped. (jump to the bottom for the free write if you want to skip the end of the year ramble)
Gentle December Scenes :)
I have had so many ideas and thoughts on what to send in December towards the end of the year, maybe a gift guide for the - ( to quite some Gen Alpha slang from my 12-year-old niece) “anxious baddies” in your life, spoiler alert— it’s me. A round-up of gratitude for recent moments this fall? Ways to celebrate the season? But if I had to guess you are coming across plenty of this content already on socials, blogs, and your inbox. I know my anxiety, SAD, and weight of crippling expectations this year already feels rampant.
A phrase floating around on social media has caught my attention recently as it tends to do when you work as a social media manager and content marketer.
“Instead of finishing the year strong, what if you finish the year gently?”
( I don’t recall where I saw this post first, but I love this one from the Daily Rest.)
Just the other day I pulled data to do a “2024 wrapped” post for my place of work, numbers for the people we served through various free programs and events, numbers I feel really proud of. But pulling data and having numbers to pull for your own life is often not as easy as or simple. How to count the minutes struggling, hoping, working, sacrificing, and caring? Especially as a working caregiver and creative. (What would your 2024 wrapped say?)
I did see a brilliant and sadly hilariously relatable “Mental Health 2024 edition” here by Mindless Labs.
This isn’t the year I published or finished my non-fiction anthology book manuscript as I had hoped.
Instead, it is the year I started seeking counsel/ therapy and medical treatment for my mental health for the first time in 30 years( praise for in-person therapy sessions and also anxiety/depression medication).
It is the year I started a weekly wellness/fitness/ mindful movement and breathing class every Tuesday after work. The first time I have been this consistent in 10 years as a working mom.
It is the year I had to do consultations with surgeons for procedures I have to do in the near future.
It is the year I joined not one but three in-person community writing group/classes and met other writers of all ages and stages of life in my local community.
It is the year I finally launched a creative project with my fellow working mom bestie over
It is the year I finally used all my PTO and got to take a spring break with my babies, a family trip this summer, a thanksgiving break, and finally holiday PTO.
The year I booked a photoshoot with my creative bestie to celebrate turning 30 and surviving a year at our corporate jobs (see more here).
It is the year I did a video interview/ podcast for the first time (see more here).
It is the year I have done so many things vastly and wildly outside of my comfort zone both personally and professionally.
It is another year and trip around the sun that I am still here, despite it all, and I have continued to show up for the people I love and things I love.
It’s another year we are all here. So whatever you did or not accomplish on your list of resolutions or goals or intentions that feels worthy of celebration.
Full disclosure, when I first started writing this substack I was sitting in a local coffee shop, on my first day off work, with a rare overlap of kids still being in school. This was the week before Christmas. As I sit writing this paragraph and the second half of the newsletter, I am sitting in my Christmas flannel, it is the no-mans land week between Christmas and New Year, and I have had to skip it out on a family trip that was planned due to cold/flu symptoms like a sore throat, body aches, headaches, and fatigue. I am riding out day 3 with Nyquil, cough drops, and throat coat tea. This is the reality of someone with autoimmune disease, missing out on fun plans because your body/immune system crashed, typically as soon as you have time off or fun things planned, but I digress, as this is another substack for another time.
I am not making new years resolutions or goals. It feels that the past 365 days have been too heavy and full to saddle a new calendar year with more weighted expectations and demands. I wrote a thing here on traveling gently into the new year as a mother.
Instead, I’m trying to find my word of the year, and I’m putting things on the calendar to look forward too, to anticipate. I did buy my annual 2025 planner in the hopes that it’ll change things (IYKYK) but if not, I find I am making more progress with acceptance these days anyway. I wrote a thing about women as seasons that was recently featured on the Coffee and Crumbs Insta feed here. Here’s your end-of-year reminder, we can’t produce all the time. We are allowed to ebb and flow. I hope the end of the year finds you in loose clothing, and loosely held expectations, that whatever goals or intentions you set it maybe feels like you didn’t reach, you can see all the ways you moved forward, chose hope, and continued. New year, same you, worthy as you already are, here’s to continuing. (free write below with some book/ links/content round ups)
Gloriously Unnecessary By Hannah Lacy
I need more of the “unnecessary” in my life. I think we all do.
Unnecessary the second cup of coffee that you have just for fun, for the pleasure, the joy and the feel of it. Not just for survival.
Unnecessary- like pumpkins on the front porch for Halloween.
Unnecessary- like the I love you just because care package or text you send to a friend or receive.
Unnecessary- like poetry, or art or music. The things that grip our soul, remind us of our humanity.
All the seemingly “unnecessary” things are in the end ,what often give us the will to live.
Not all of life is transactional, not all of what we need is functional.
A wise man once said “We need beauty as well as bread”.
It is a privilege, all of it.
The food on the table, and the lavish sunset.
The backpack and the sparkly dress.
What if we treated each other the same in our daily interactions? Not as transactions, or encounters for function only but as something that makes life worth living. Aren’t we all maybe in the grand scheme of things a bit unnecessary?
But essential to those we know and love. What if we remembered the same of the person standing on the corner, the barista, the waiter, the teacher, doctor, nurse, the person with different political views you know - the friend, neighbor, co-worker or relative.. what if we are all both the backpack and the sparkly dress? The food on the table and the sunset? That first cup of caffeine for survival and the second for comfort, warmth, and joy?
Maybe we should all be a little more excessive and redundant and extra and unnecessary with our hope, with kind words, with giving each other the benefit of the doubt. Maybe we all make a mess cause we’re learning to live- all
Of us first-time passengers on the express of the human experience. All of it is gloriously “unnecessary”, but here we are.
Wishing you lots of this gloriously unnecessary energy for 2025.
Link Round-Ups:
Pre-orders for 2025. I have just pre-ordered “Dear Writer: Pep Talks & Practical Advice for the Creative Life by Maggie Smith , releasing in April, literally cannot wait. I don’t know if you follow @inspiredtowrite on Instagram but imagine my surprise and delight to see that Aimee Mcnee has a book coming out in March 2025- We Need Your Art: Stop Messing Around and Make Something. Emily Henry Fans will also be happy to see that she is releasing a new novel in April ( happy birthday to me!) called Great Big Beautiful Life. Fans of Just for the Summer will also be thrilled to see that Abby Jimez has a new novel coming out on April 1st called, Say You’ll Remember Me.
2024: a year for the books. 📚 I won’t recap all of my reads this year in this substack post. But Goodreads did it for me thankfully. I set a goal for 52 books, that I didn’t meet, I read 34. But since the goal is really more reading over doom scrolling, more mindful consumption of stories and art. I’m going to check mark this as complete. Average book length in 2024 was 399 pages, longest book ready 757 pages ( thanks ACOTAR lol), shortest book read was 240 pages.
If you or someone you knew could use a little mental health support I highly first of all recommend speaking with a licensed medical professional and considering medication, depending on your physicians recommendation. Outside of that if you are looking for some destressing tools I 10/10 recommend Headspace. I use it almost daily for the 5 cleansing breaths, guided mediations, and evening windows since fall 2023. You can do a 14 day trial for free!
More book reviews here: https://www.goodreads.com/user/year_in_books/2024/129634012
Some 2025 vision board inspiration:
