10 Things I Won't Be Doing in 2025
Creators Getting Paid
A better title for this post could be “How I’m Setting Boundaries and Reasonable Expectations in 2025” Last year was a weird year. I found myself moving quietly in the creator space. Like many people I was preoccupied with so many things. Despite those distractions I was able to grow my various projects. At the end of the year when I had a moment to reflect, I found that there were moments during the year when things got really, really stressful. These moments were 100% my fault. I found the months between early October through December to be particularly stressful. Yes, the Election was partly to blame. However, business design was the real issue. I said “yes” to too many things and ended up overly committed at the time of year where I just want to relax.
Last Week’s Podcast Episode
7 Strategies to Building a Healthier and Happier Online Biz in 2025
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What I’m Saying “No” To in 2025
I’m tired just thinking about this list.
Volunteering for New Committees-I’m at capacity and last year it became super stressful. I want to show and support different organizations, spaces and my friends’ work-I just don’t have the capacity currently with the growth of my projects. I have to show up differently. In order to say “yes” I will have to let something else go. I’m currently serving on a board and will step down at the end of 2025.
Making commitments when I really need downtime-This was one of the hardest lesson learned last year. Typically I slow things down significantly from mid-November through mid-January. This year I didn’t. Instead, I pushed hard until the end of December. Then, I went on my retreat. I was so excited to go on my retreat. I was also pretty f#cking tired during that week. The thing is, I went on a WORK RETREAT. I had a ton of content that I was obligated to work on. By the end of December I was just worn out.
Adding a New Brand-As a multi-passionate content creator this is so dang hard. I do want to say that I’m rebranding a project, but I’m not starting any new projects in 2025. I’m a huge fan of the podcast Niche Pursuits and I continue to be amazed by the number of side-hustles that Jarrod and Spencer experiment with. I just don’t have the bandwidth or team to do that. It’s also important to me to achieve whatever success looks like for the brands that I’ve already built.
Traveling to Events Held in States that I’m Actively Boycotting-I’ve done this for several years now but I won’t be attending events held in states passing (additional) legislation causing harm to others. This doesn’t mean that I won’t support creators who live in these states. That support would just be direct to them. That said, it’s not my business whether or not other people attend those events-I’m not paying anyone else’s bills. Just mine. Do what is best for you!
Focusing on Social Media Growth-For several years now I have used social media less and less as a primary way to grow my brand. Social media with its incessant algorithm changes, trolls and time commitment stopped being for me. Then there was the problematic ownership. Social Media slowly but surely made its way to the bottom of my list for marketing and I’m so happy about it.
Playing Small-Last year was a quiet year for me and I think in having a quiet year, I felt like in some ways I “played small” While there are moments to be introspective and quiet, there’s a point where that energy has to change.
The Timing of Client Focused Projects-Between mid-November through mid-January I should NOT be working on client projects. I provide consulting for organizations developing content for their brand. I absolutely LOVED working on the projects that I helped develop in 2024 .
Not Dressing the Part-This one may surprise you. Let me clarify. I’ve gained a lot of weight since COVID. I am in the beginning stages of getting my health back and I wanted to look nice NOW. I felt so uncomfortable with how my clothes fit, I didn’t want to buy new clothes that wouldn’t fit later. I also felt like my clothes weren’t matching the direction that I was working towards. I also was becoming increasingly uncomfortable being in pictures and on camera. Why? I just didn’t feel like myself. I started using NUULY which is a clothing subscription service similar to Rent the Runway. What made NUULY work for me was that the clothing actually fit my lifestyle. I’ve really enjoyed using the subscription so far and I’ve had to remind myself that I am not allowed to purchase the items LOL!
Paying Attention to Other People’s Opinions
Success, Failures
I would like to say that I do a pretty good job of ignoring what other people say. Specifically, the naysayers, negative Nellies and those people who always have something to say. But sometimes I find people distracting. I’ll share some examples below.
On Substack-I’m completely baffled by how aggressive the discourse can be around selling. The literally point of designing the Substack platform in the way that they have is to help writers and other creatives monetize their work. That includes this wild thing called SALES. Why are so many people called upon to engage with content that doesn’t have anything to do with them? Just ignore it and focus on you. Rant over.
Comparisonitous-I love celebrating my friends’ wins…but, I’m human and sometimes I compare myself to other people and am unkind to myself. It’s so important to uplift and celebrate my friends. It’s also important for me to not make myself feel some kind of way about where I’m at now. We all have our own pace to reach where we’re going.
We’ve all experienced failure-The longer that we’ve been in content creation. I’ve absolutely experienced what could be seen as failure every single year that I’ve worked on my business.
Pay Attention to Yourself
And Mind Your Business
Be kind and keep it moving. I think with all of the negative energy floating out there in the world it can be easy to lose sight of this. I like to think of myself as a positive person and while I am, I do think that being mindful and careful of the negative energy that can unintentionally influence how I experience the world and other people.
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