Not An Annual Reflection

Happy New Year! I hope you all had a lovely holiday season.

Usually, my first article of each year is my annual reflection. You can read my past annual reflections here:

• My 2024 Annual Reflection: Health Matters, Turning 40 in Style, and So Much Fun
• My 2023 Annual Reflection: Space for What Matters, Celebrating Wins, and My Successful Year
• My 2022 Annual Reflection: Practicing Resilience and Finding Joy
• My 2021 Annual Reflection: Languishing, Flourishing, Momentum, and a Hard Loss

You can also read about the process I go through here: How To Do an Annual Reflection to Get The Most Out Of The Year Ahead, and how to set themes in Take Aim: How To Reflect, Set Direction, and Make Progress In The Year Ahead.

This year, though I wrote a 1500-word piece and went through all the steps I normally do, I couldn’t get my annual reflection article to come together. Part of the reason is that 2025 was a tough year for me, and I struggled to find the right tone. I wanted to be honest and open, but it felt like all I was doing was whining, and I couldn't quite tease out the silver linings. I fought with it so much that I decided to let it go and write this instead.😅

Two significant parts of why last year was so challenging are: 

1. My MS was very active. I had some life stressors escalate (and stay escalated) and got into a tough cycle of being stressed, having my MS flare, and then being stressed because my MS was flaring, and so on. It meant I wasn’t sleeping well, the fatigue got bad, and it made everything kind of hard. It's still ongoing.
2. My consulting business was hit hard by how AI changed the way people use the internet. The combination of those AI summaries at the top of your search engine, as well as people switching to use ChatGPT (or similar) as a search engine itself, means that instead of finding one of my articles, people are reading AI summaries or asking chatbots questions and then moving on. As a result, over the last year, but most noticeably in the last six months, search engine traffic to my website has plummeted, my newsletter signups have flatlined, and my free consultation bookings have more than halved. The economic instability in the United States is a factor as well.

Because of these things, I've made the difficult decision to take a break from writing and publishing. I’m not sure for how long and when (or even if) I will pick it up again. In the near term, I need to focus on my health by reducing my commitments and focus on my business by finding better ways to reach people.

I am still accepting consulting clients, so please, if you or someone you know needs help calming your chaos, don’t hesitate to reach out.

For now, I wish you all as much joy and calm in the year ahead as you can find. Take care of yourselves and the people you love, and do your best to live your intentional life. Until next time. ❤️