Things I learned in 2024, and 2025 resolutions

We’re a few days into 2025 now, and I can’t say I’ve really had time either for reflection on the year gone by or anticipation of the year ahead, as I operate in “let’s just try to keep this thing afloat” mode during school vacations. However, my husband has taken the kids out to soft play (hell on earth, imo), and so I find myself with a Cointreau spiked coffee, a few pieces of Terry’s Chocolate Orange (iykyk), and long enough to write a little reflection post.

10 things I learned in 2024

1. I have to parent the kids I have, and not the kids I think I ought to be able to mould them into. This year has involved really tricky periods with each of my three kids, and I’ve been forced to stare my limitations as a parent squarely in the face. In a way that has been quite liberating; to just accept that there’s little I can really control, so I may as well relinquish my grip a bit. At the same time, it has meant doubling down on the things that I can control, and really working out what those things should be.

2. Less TV means more mess, via

   Clover Stroud
   . Clover has written several times this year about her evolving approach to screens for her kids, and I really appreciate what she writes because she is very much talking about what she has figured out is good for her own family, rather than from some ideological high horse. Anyway, this is a comment she made offhand in one of those posts, but it really stuck with me because I realised that often when let the kids watch TV, it’s because I can’t handle the mess that other activities generate. Sometimes that’s totally legit: as per this post, I think it’s absolutely ok to want 30 minutes where no one is screaming or dropping bags of mini pompoms on the floor. But it was also an invitation for me to assess if I really want TV to be the answer to my inability to regulate my stress levels around mess, and the answer is no.

3. I spend a lot less time on my phone without Instagram, but still quite a bit. At the end of 2023, I deleted Instagram permanently. I am really glad I did that, and although I occasionally miss stalking abilities, I have no doubt that it was the right thing to do. That said, it didn’t reduce my phone usage as much as I imagined it might: even without any social media apps (including Substack) on my phone, I still average around 2.5-3hrs/day of phone use. Most of that is sending and receiving voice memos, reading the news and newsletters that come to my inbox, and NYT puzzles (ha). Although I would still like to use my phone less, it’s not a major goal for me at the moment - overall, my phone usage is a lot healthier than it used to be, and I’m content to leave it at that for now.

4. It takes a long time to work out what rhythm works for your family, and if/when you figure it out, it won’t be long before something changes and you have to reconfigure. That said, there are some things you learn along the way that are helpful going forward, e.g. we’ve figured that extracurriculars on weekends just don’t work well for us; on the other hand, the kids seem to do well with having extracurriculars after school, even though it makes their days super long.

5. There are years for sowing and years for reaping fruit. I feel that I’ve spent many years now in “sowing” mode, and I am hoping 2025 will be a year of bearing fruit. To a large extent, these things are beyond our control, but I feel ready to really throw my weight behind bringing forth some things that have been simmering below the surface for years - from creative projects, to changes in relationships, to health issues, to my spiritual life.

6. It’s good to hold onto things lightly, but that isn’t the same a detachment. I distinctly remember a family member, who is atheist, going through terrible heartbreak and saying that they wished they could adopt the Buddhist principle of detachment, as it would make their pain so much easier to carry. In a way, Catholicism encourages the opposite of detachment - a real leaning into the pain and the joy of being alive - but it does also encourage us to hold the things of this world lightly, and not to put our hope or faith or joy in a particular set of circumstances. This is obviously a huge theological topic and I’m not going to attempt to unpack it here, but it’s something I’ve been mulling over a lot.

7. For every boundary you hold, there is an emotional cost. The question is working out which ones are worth it. A sleep consultant of all people told me this, but I think it’s just good life advice. There’s so much talk about boundaries these days and I have reservations about some of it, but I also recognise that the concept has been really beneficial for many people in discerning how to proceed with relationships of all kinds (including with ourselves!). It took me a long time to realise that setting a boundary will always be hard in some way, and it’s totally valid to decide that you just don’t have the bandwidth to deal with the consequences of trying to hold boundaries in some scenarios. Like so much in life, it is an ongoing question of cost/benefit analysis.

8. I’m pretty sure Eric Carle was high all the time. Just pick up any of his books. (I love him, of course.)

9. Most people are control freaks under one guise or another, and it is perhaps the human trait that most inhibits flourishing. (That’s quite a bold statement, but I think it’s true).

10. Periods of spiritual desolation can be periods of spiritual growth, even if we don’t notice it. The past couple of years have been pretty dry in terms of cosy feelings of closeness to God, but when I look back, I see that my faith is in many ways more robust now than it was when it felt more comforting, and when I experienced more consolations. I also think that getting off Instagram really helped with this, as in many ways it had become a crutch in my faith life (although it also really helped me in my early years as a Catholic, so it definitely isn’t all bad!). My prayer life is pitiful and I often drag my heels on the way to Mass, but I am more convinced than ever that the God of grace reigns.

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2025

“Lacking answers about the future, we should prepare to receive them by living today to the full” - Fr. Jacques Philippe

I don’t love the phrase “living today to the full” but I’m going to assume that was a translation issue (not that I’ve bothered to check the original French). Otherwise, this is a sentiment I really want to hold onto in 2025. Of course none of us know what the future holds, but I often find myself really stuck on questions about the future, in particular the mid-term future. I am often hesitant to commit to things in the present because of uncertainty about what might be the case in a year, two years, five years. The only reasonable thing to do is respond to life as it is now, and look toward the future with curiosity, but not fixation.

In this spirit, my main resolution for 2025 is very concrete: to do some home improvements, mainly aesthetic. We’ve lived here for almost 3.5 years, and have done very little to really “invest” in it as a home, because we never meant for it to be our “forever home”. It is still very much our intention to move at some point, but which point remains hazy. In the absence of that knowledge, I may as well treat this home as though we are going to live here for the longterm, so that I can feel happier about my living space while we’re here.

I generally recoil from vague notions like “live in the present” and the many permutations of that concept, but my hope is to reduce the presence of hypothetical future scenarios in my posture towards daily life. When it’s necessary to think about the future - which of course, it often is - I want to focus on concrete things that I can do to shape what the days, months, and years ahead, rather that expending energy on hand-wringing about things I cannot possibly know.

A lofty goal, I know.

In any case, I’m feeling unusually optimistic as 2025 begins, which may be slightly deranged given the chaos of the world and my increasing awareness of life’s ability to explode on the most unsuspecting (and undeserving) human creatures, but I still have hope. People are resilient, and grace abounds.

Happy new year!