Failure, Mess, and Glory

what I'm seeking in 2025.

Today’s offering is more of a letter than an essay.

You see, my ideas and observations for this newsletter often come from being out in the world—the barista was mean, the barista was proud, folks danced in the park, a man ate snacks in a public square. But I haven’t been out much lately; I’ve been burrowing within.

I spent the past couple weeks in a cave. Not a literal Fraggle-esque rock void, mind you, a metaphorical cave of my own making. I’ve been living in fiction—writing it, and for a break, reading it. Aside from a handful of meetings and errands and the necessary work of human maintenance, all my interactions have been imaginary.

Some recent company.

If you’ve been reading for a while, then you know that I’ve been “writing a novel” for years now. I put that in quotes because it doesn’t feel honest without them. I did write. Inconsistently. I outlined. I stalled. I changed direction, concept, POV. I scrapped it and started again. I set deadlines and shared them, for accountability. Nothing worked.

Few things were more triggering than displays of others’ productivity—posts about word count, the (seemingly) easy way they’d waltz between courting discipline and the muse. It seemed they possessed some ability, some circumstance, that I didn’t. Maybe, I began to reason, I simply wasn’t cut out for this.

Eventually, I questioned the dream. Maybe it was the relic of a long-ago self, no longer suited to the person I’d become. Maybe I was better off pursuing other paths and other projects. Maybe it was time to stop torturing myself. Maybe it was okay to fail.

Yet as the clock turns, I’ve written more in the last couple weeks than I had in the last couple years. (This isn’t a brag—it’s not THAT much, it’s yet to meet anyone’s eyes, and as is the nature of nascent things, I have no sense of whether it’s brilliance or trash. Though safely it’s somewhere in between.)

I bring this up not (only) to explain how nothing newsletter-worthy has transpired lately, but as a reminder of how life happens in seasons. Fits, starts, bursts, cycles. Destined to change even if we resist it, and to bring us along for the ride.

It’s that time of year when we talk about time—quantifying, qualifying. The season of lists and recommendations. Bests and worsts, highs and lows, intentions and improvements, goals and resolutions, habits and routines. (I’m exhausted just typing that.)

In previous years, I’ve chosen a word for the year—enough; answer; success—but this year, I’m too hungry for that. I want phrases, verses, stanzas, songs. I want failure, mess, and glory (synonyms, it turns out). I want expression, without borders or edits or limits. At least when it comes to the first draft. (And isn’t living always the first draft?)

As we enter 2025, in all its numeric and societal oddness, I’m thinking less in terms of years and more in terms of seasons.

It’s easy to mistake a moment for forever, to think however we feel right now is how we are destined to stay. But no feeling is final, and neither is any season. If there is any wisdom to be found in the turning of the calendar, it is this.

Over the previous year, multiple friends suggested that I might enjoy escaping “reality” (translation: grief) by working on fiction. But sitting still felt painful, impossible. Writing someone else’s truth only brought me closer to what simmered below the surface.

Now, in my current season, I feel ready. It is less of an escape and more of a homecoming. The permission to say what’s so achingly true there is no factual way to report it. I can’t predict what will transpire from here, and I make no promises. All I know is this: what works for one person may not work for another—including our changing selves.

As I wade deeper into this novel, I’ve been reminded that art is not a pursuit one forces open, like a door, but one we enter, plumb, descend, like a cave. It’s a process, requiring some adjustment and a decent amount of trust. The mouth of the cave is foreboding. The climate changes as we proceed. Only once we’re immersed—if we stay with it, if we allow it—can we discover what we came to find.

Kind of like years.

Me and my imaginary friends making some art in a cave.

I don’t know what 2025 will bring, what it will teach us, who we will become. But I’ll leave room for it, like a story unfolding. The message, as in all seasons, is simply to keep going.

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Paid subscribers will receive the weekly card later this week. I’ll also be opening up a handful of appointments for 1:1 readings in the coming months.

Happy New Year. Thank you, as always, for reading. x