happy 2025! i forgot to make any resolutions

Life is a river and we're just here to go tubing.

Happy new year! (From 13 hours ahead!)

A not so secret about me: I love writing to-do tasks, which often translates to resolutions and goals. I love living my life in lists. For the last few years, I have determinedly broken down my goals into chunks that eventually have timelines and little subtasks. Ask me about my projects Airtable if you dare.

That being said, I haven’t made a single resolution for 2025. (Unless “Survive” counts.)

Part of that is the lack of time. 2025 snuck up on me while I wasn’t looking, head down in projects and edits and spending time with loved ones. As I write this, it’s December 31st and it still hasn’t sunk in that tomorrow is a new year. Tomorrow I get to do the annoying thing and say “Hey remember that story you told me last year?” Tomorrow I get to forget to write 2025 on every single date for the next three weeks. Tomorrow is a new year, and with it, all new possibilities. And I forgot all about it.

December 32nd is a thing, right? Please say I’m right.

But what are resolutions for anyway? After all, in reflecting on the year at hand, I realized that barely any of my resolutions or goals were completed. (RIP, video short I was supposed to make. You will, once again, be shelved.)

This is not to say it was a failure. 2024, despite the fact that it was a rollercoaster of chaos, had a lot of really great highlights. In no specific order, this year I:

• Announced that I sold a book!

• Spoke to some extremely bright and curious high schoolers about writing, worldbuilding, and fantasy genres—my first speaking gig!

• Celebrated my friends launching 2024 debut books!!!! THE TALENT

• Wrote a guide for Gastro Obscura about where to eat in Penang!

• Moderated my first author conversation with my friend Anna Rasche, author of The Stone Witch of Florence!

• Completed my first mentorship program as a mentor, and got accepted as a mentor in another writing program

• Took my parents to the US Open

• Cracked open research on an exciting WIP that I can’t wait to scream about

• Saw Hadestown

• Saw SEVENTEEN in concert (my first Kpop concert!)

• Performed at an open mic in front of my parents :’)

• Spent infinity hours catching up with friends and loved ones, putting down roots, reconnecting, refreshing

• Etc, etc, etc.

It’s nice to look back on this list, because I don’t think January 2024 me would have expected almost half of these things to come through. But I learned a lot about myself doing this on the fly. If anything, 2024 was a year where the resolutions had to be thrown out the window, because they just weren’t what I needed to grow. That’s the weird thing about growth — it’s not always linear. Or expected.

There are years where you sow, and some years where you reap, and 2024 was a sowing year to learn from. 2024 was a year in which I asked myself: What do you want? and was surprised by the answer. 2024 was a year in which a lot happened, and some of it was good, and some of it was bad, and life moved on anyway, whether I had a tidy list of resolutions or not.

So maybe this year I don’t go in blazing with a list of resolutions. Maybe it’s a year in which I allow myself to meander, and see what goals develop come June. Maybe it’ll work. Maybe it won’t. But I keep coming back to something that one of my favorite creators, Caroline Klidonas, once wrote. It’s a larger piece in the context of being creative with no expectations, but the phrase that sticks with me was “See, your life didn’t end at your failure. See? You’re fine. You’ll be fine the next time it happens, too.” It’s a good reminder for me that life isn’t just a straight road. Sometimes it turns into what we think are failures and dead ends, but life doesn’t end there. We find ways through, over, under, and around. Life is a river, and we’re just here to go tubing. Bad metaphor? Sure. They can’t all be winners. I’ll find a better one next time. (Probably 2am right after this newsletter goes out.)

I’ll leave you with this song from Arcane (spoilers for the music video if you haven’t seen the show), which seems extremely poignant at this moment:

Go spin the wheel and see where it lands
Join in the circus, stay for a dance, and
Right when the war quiets down, ya strike up the band
Keep marching on, my friends
And do what you can

Here’s to 2025—the good, the bad, the resonant. Whether or not you wrote resolutions, I’d love to hear what you’re excited about this year. Whatever it is, may you carve new rivers for yourself. I love you all. Thank you for being here.

PS: ONE MORE YEAR UNTIL DEBUT YEAR WHAT A WILD SENTENCE TO WRITE

PPS: SOMEONE PLEASE TALK TO ME ABOUT ARCANE

PPPS: MY CAPS LOCK KEY IS STUCK SEND HELP PLS