Following the breadcrumbs
Fumbling my way into 2025
Hey friends,
I hope you’ve all had a wonderful festive period and have enjoyed this funny little liminal space between Christmas and New Year.
I don't know about you, but, as nice as it would be to get straight back into it and hit the ground running, be all new year, new me, or fill pages of my journal with reflections and resolutions, I’m finding it harder than ever to motivate myself to sit down at my desk.
Being self-employed is tough, sometimes. I love it - and also know I wouldn’t have it any other way - but I’m also still feeling quite tired and tapped out from the year just been and think I probably need to give myself a little bit more of a break. Both literally and metaphorically; I’m definitely my own worst critic.
For example, after I mentioned my upcoming creative circle (Jan 9th) in last week’s letter, I had big ideas for posts I wanted to write to promote it. Initially, I felt really motivated and ready to go, but then it just slipped through my fingers and ebbed away with the tides.
Instead, I ended up falling down many a rabbit hole, learning about things like:
The history of calendars, and why we celebrate the new year on Jan 1st.
How Julius Caesar’s Julian calendar (circa 46 BCE), overestimated the solar year by just 11 minutes.
Why this resulted in the British using two calendars for 230 years (because accepting its replacement, the Gregorian calendar, would’ve meant giving more power to the Catholic church).
Where the name “calendar” comes from, and how it ties into lunar cycles; the Roman word “calare” used to mean the calling of the new moon when it was first seen.
Why I much prefer the idea of lunar New Years and nature-based cues than calculated ones - e.g. Here in Western Australia we have six seasons which, despite now being “officially” squeezed into two-month slots, previously went off natural markers; like when certain flowers bloomed, animals migrated, rivers flowed, or birth/mating seasons.
I also ended up reading every single journal entry from my 3-year One Line a Day diary, which wasn’t meant to be on the cards but was actually pretty insightful. Yay, procrasti-productivity?
As someone who never actually ended up “completing” The Artist’s Way because I didn’t want to read back over my months of morning pages, I was surprised I wanted to go there. But go there I did, and well… Let’s just say it helped me feel much better about the year just gone - and the one before that.
I also really love having a way of marking the passage of time that feels easy and convenient.
As much as I love long-form journalling, it can be tough to write every day, especially when the shit hits the fan or things are just a bit bleurgh, as they often can be when navigating stuff like my mum’s Alzheimer’s along with my chronic pain, work/business struggles, and visa stress.
On a bad day, writing it all down is often the last thing I want to do.
However, having a 365 ¼ day journal where I write just a few sentences for each day, even if they’re about the weather or something silly - and get the nice little mental boost seeing the pages fill up - has been transformative.
Reading it back really gave me the chance to see patterns, threads, and breadcrumbs emerging on the page long before they turned into something.
Hindsight is 20/20, of course, but when we don’t have a way of capturing those tiny moments and marking the passage of time, we often lose track of those threads - or never even see them to begin with.
I started the journal on May 11th, 2023.
At the time, I was working with a writing mentor trying to develop my freelance travel writing career and take it to the next level. I was writing for Tripadvisor, putting together pitches for the NYT and Huffington Post (which kept getting rejected!), calling my mum almost every single day, and applying for permanent residency so I could stay in Australia.
It was a stressful time. I felt like I was in the middle of a whirlpool that was pulling me in all these different directions, but none of them felt “right”.
Secretly, I already knew that I didn’t want to be a full-time freelance writer anymore. I didn’t want to find timely commercial angles and constantly pitch stories, or be told that this month I had to write 50 articles about X, Y, and Z, and that each one should take me an hour - especially when they always took me 3x as long.
I also was sick of calling my mum and feeling like I was pouring all my energy into a leaky cup. I know it was helpful and there were many benefits for her and my family, but fuck, it was hard. She’d cry, let the dog out, lock herself out the house, panic, freak out the postman, forget who I was, forget who everyone else was, hang up on me, and then not pick up again.
Instead, I wanted to write my own story and find a more aligned career that better filled my cup and played to my strengths.
I really missed helping people. It had been my favourite thing about being a travel agent, a graphic designer, and a disaster relief worker. I thought travel writing would help me help more people, but, after 11 years, I felt disenchanted with the whole industry.
I also had big dreams to build my own website - something I’d been putting off for years because paid work always came first. Between that, the visa application - where I felt like I was constantly having to jump through hoops and prove myself and my worth to others - and the calls to my mum, who was getting further away by the day, I really wanted a “virtual” home. A place that felt like it was mine.
Writing this down - over and over - meant that it actually happened. I could see the dots, and take small, aligned daily actions to join them. Just like the words on the page, day after day, I could see progress and motivate myself to keep going.
By May 11th, 2024, I’d built myself a beautiful website, was six months into this newsletter writing journey, and had worked with 15 amazing clients in my role as a creative mentor - along with plenty more mentors, coaches, and guides to help me develop my own mentoring skills and space-holding abilities.
On May 11th, 2024, I also saw the Southern Lights for the first time - and on New Year’s Day 2025, I saw them for the second.
Although things have slowed down a lot these past few months, it still felt like a pretty magical sign that I’m on the right track.
In May, everything felt like it was going great. Since then, though, it’s been a bit of a bumpy ride.
I haven’t shared that much about it, I don’t think, but in June, my mum got really sick while on respite in a care home and was admitted to hospital. It was touch-and-go for a while, but, although she made it, she hasn’t been the same since, including developing Alzheimer’s-related epilepsy and having several grand mal seizures.
I felt utterly paralysed, especially being here on the other side of the world, glued to my phone waiting for news - good or bad. I found myself shying away from any sort of public stage and focusing more on the clients and work I already had instead of putting myself out there to try and find more.
Then, in August, I travelled to Slovakia for a friend’s wedding and spent two weeks in the UK with my family. When I returned, I wrote nearly a hundred articles in the lead-up to quitting my main writing job at the end of October.
Shortly after that, my sister and her family came to visit and I spent nearly three weeks playing tour guide. By December, I was pretty damn tapped out.
Looking at it all now, it’s probably no wonder that I feel like I’m limping into the new year. 2024 was big.
That said, going back to my journal, one thing that kept coming up was a desire to build my own community, especially moving into 2025.
It’s something I’ve wanted to take action on since I started running writing workshops in 2022, but haven’t yet made reality. Now feels like the perfect time to follow those breadcrumbs and see where they lead me.
Over the past two decades or so, I’ve been part of many writing groups, creative spaces, and circles, and absolutely love the magic that can be woven when people gather together and connect across time and space.
I also find that my creative friends are often the ones who are far more willing to dive into the depths of life and come back bearing pearls of wisdom and other gifts that they want to share with others. And by that, I don’t just mean creatives who have active creative practices or careers; but people who see the world through a more creative lens - who can transmute the darkness and find ways back to the light.
The ones who don’t shy away from going there, even when it hurts.
And so, as we swim through these murky waters in the early days of the new year - even if it is just a made-up date - it feels like an apt time to gather together. To tell stories, to swim beneath the surface, together, and sift through the sand for treasure, or to do a Rumpelstiltskin and spin straw into gold.
I’d love for you to join me on the 9th January for my first ever online circle. It’s free for all my subscribers. We’ll be meeting at 8.30am GMT (4.30pm AWST, 7.30pm AEDT) for an hour. You can bring a journal, if you want, but you can also just show up exactly how you are and trust that will be enough.
Here’s the link if you want to RSVP or add it to your calendar. (Ha, that’s that word again!)
For now, though, I’m going to retreat back to my cosy little corner. It’s my mum’s 64th birthday tomorrow and I’m trying not to think about it too much as it makes me sad.
Sending you so much love,
Cxx
PS: TLDR - I’m running an hour-long creative circle for all my free and paid Substack subscribers (next week on January 9th at 4.30pm AWST (7.30pm AEST and 8.30am GMT). I’d love to see you there!
PPS: I’m also still offering a discount on my Substack membership for anyone who upgrades before January 9th. In the future, I’m planning to run these circles as monthly events for my paid community, along with Q+As, group mentoring, and other perks.
Beautiful, a full year of exploration xx
❤️❤️❤️