Every year, I choose a one-word theme. For 2025, it’s “Reset.”
When a ship traverses the sea for a long time, it’ll accumulate barnacles on its hull. For the tiny crustaceans, it doesn’t matter where they sit. They’ll attach to any surface, as long as it supplies them with the water from which they get their nutrients. For the ship, however, in time, they become a heavy burden—literally. And while the weight of the barnacles will rarely be enough to sink the vessel, it might slow it down or bring it out of balance.
2024 was the year I realized: After ten years of writing and working for myself, I’ve racked up too many barnacles. For the first half of those ten years, I was mostly learning, growing, finding myself as a writer, person, and entrepreneur. But from the pandemic onwards, everything was a blur. Financially, it was a rollercoaster, and the velocity of that ride kept me latching onto whatever next thing I could get a hold of. But in late 2023, there was nothing left to reach for, and my ship slowly started sinking.
It took me all year to process everything, to shed off my old identity, to rise from the ashes of a fire that had burned for a decade. And now that I’ve finally accepted change is in order, well, it’s time to scrape off some barnacles! Time to reset.
The word “reset” means to start over, of course. To shut down, erase, reboot, and begin anew with a clean slate. But it also means to adjust. To fiddle with just slightly, so that an imbalanced, misaligned object may once again slot into its proper place. That, too, is “re-setting.” Moving a piece of the puzzle for the big picture to make sense. I’ll need to do a lot of both, hence “Reset” as my theme for 2025.
My work will be reset. I’ve picked up a full-time job, and everything else will have to fit in around the edges. Four Minute Books will be reset. No more ads, affiliate revenue, or any form of monetization that is not me selling my own creations. Perhaps it’ll have to be merged into this blog or disappear altogether. My writing will be re-set. I’ll get a chance to realign on what I really want to write, but I’ll also have to adjust to make time to then do that writing.
It’s easy to reflect at the turn of the year, and I can only recommend picking an annual theme, but I also know this to be true: Reset buttons are everywhere. You can hit as many of them as you like at any time. Whether you need to re-set some planks or build a new ship altogether, don’t wait. You deserve smooth sailing at all times—and every removed barnacle counts.