Ways to make the most of 2025
Well hello, how are you feeling as we find ourselves in a bright, crisp new year? And crisp it certainly is – our views out to the snowy Lake District hills are so stunning at the moment that they don’t look real.
Anyway back to the feeling of a new year. I’ve caught up with a lot of my favourite people over the last month or so and in my circle the mood ranges from the wild delight of the newly retired to those who are facing a challenging year because they find themselves in one of the troughs that life randomly throws in your path. No two people are ever travelling the same track at the same time but I think you feel more aware of the disparity when you hit a new year, especially if a hill lies ahead so I’ve been thinking of ways to make the most of 2025.
Right now I feel in a bit of a no man’s land. This week as I’ve slunk reluctantly back to my desk it’s struck me what a weird time we go through at the end of every year. Overnight we’re propelled from Halloween into the giddy run-up to Christmas with seemingly no time to adjust – it’s like hitting the spin cycle of a washing machine. At first we grumble, muttering our way through November then gird our loins at the beginning of December and throw ourselves into it. There’s a merry-go-round of favourite people, wonderful food, open heartedness and bonhomie…
… then suddenly like a needle scratching across a record, on 6th January it’s all over. Overnight once again everything changes, the lid goes back on the fun box and we face the expanse of a new year.
For me it’s underscored by the boys’ departure; the eldest went back down to London on the third and the youngest returns to uni next week so my everyday will feel subdued as I adjust once again.
Luckily of course we still have the easygoing middle one at home to keep us smiling but we’ll all feel the difference.
Just as I’ve got used to full-on family life again with my primary purpose being ‘mum’, I have to go back to being myself – I wonder if you relate to that feeling. It isn’t that I don’t like being me, it’s just that it’s so much easier in a way when you can submit to a defined daily role that you don’t need to think about. You know where you stand and what you need to do.
We had a truly lovely Christmas, the boys were on great form and there’s so much energy when we’re all together.
I was lucky to have them back for so long but family life has been packed away again now along with the decorations. It’s time to think about the new year that lies brimming with the chance to do some things differently and keep others just the same. Oddly for me it’s still a bit of a blank page which is probably why I feel in limbo. I usually spend the Twixmas week focusing on life, work and the blog but this time I decided not to and it felt really good to switch off and live in the moment. Mal and I didn’t even have our Twixmas walk conversation, there just wasn’t time. So instead of coming to you with fully planned words of inspiration, this is a thinking out loud post. I actually don’t have a plan for what’s next but I do want to put a loose one together. I know it’s become increasingly popular not to set intentions in January, a lot of people prefer to use this month as a Christmas mop-up, easing themselves into the new year more slowly and that’s fine but it doesn’t work for me. As you know, my view is that life is too precious to just drift along and so now, while everything’s a bit quieter, I want to think things through.
My immediate instinct is to use this month for repair in an attempt to regenerate in the same way that nature does and so I make no apologies for being on a cliched health kick. I kept my strength training up last year but I coasted through the second half of it making no progress and so I’m working on that. I had a 360 body scan update at the gym at the end of November and it showed that my visceral fat was increasing. As you’ll know that’s the stuff that’s more dangerous than subcutaneous fat because it leads to health issues. You know you have it when you sit down and your waistline spreads – I’d seen it happening so it was no surprise. I wasn’t going to tackle it in December but I am now, it isn’t fun but I know how to do it.
Ways to make the most of 2025 – health
I know that in the comments someone will ask what I do so I’ll tell you but I stress that I’m not qualified in any way to give health advice, this is just what works for me.
- Logging what I eat in the Nutracheck app, sticking to 1400 calories during the week and 1700 on Saturdays and Sundays. I also make sure I eat 130g of protein every day along with lots of fibre.
- Giving my metabolism a kickstart by upping my training to four workouts a week – two strength, one circuits, one Reformer Pilates.
- Trying to get between 7000 – 10,000 steps in a day when it isn’t too icy for Ted’s paws.
- Doing dry January which is easy when we’re at home. It might be more of a damp January because we’re in Newcastle next weekend so I may have a couple of glasses of wine when we go out, we’ll see.
I know some of you will roll your eyes but it isn’t about anything other than health and being able to wear the clothes I have comfortably. I lost my usual discipline last year and I know that if I carry on it’ll only go in one direction. The key thing is the food logging, that’s what makes the difference because it steers you away from the slivers of cheese while you’re cooking dinner – you know the kind of thing.
Ways to make the most of 2025 – life-planning
And that feels as if it’s probably enough to act on for now. January’s a good time to restore and repair, it’s a bit like giving yourself an MOT, checking you’re roadworthy for the months ahead. As for plans and dreams, it looks as though the world has another interesting year ahead and from the wide open perspective of January that feels daunting. I’m going to start thinking about what I’d like from 2025… and I say like rather than want because I feel it gives me enough agility to deal with the curveballs. We’re dropping the youngest off at the station on Wednesday as he heads back to Leeds, he has a huge workload to get through between now and his finals in June so there won’t be much family time until then. So we’re heading straight over to Newcastle after we say goodbye to reset and Mal is, I suspect, quietly resigned to the fact that I’ll be hoping for a big conversation about 2025. These are the prompts I’m going to use to get the conversation going:
What does success look like over the next five years?
Is it about time or money because in our line of work we almost always have to sacrifice one for the other. Last year we chose time, we decided to define success by working and consequently earning less because we wanted more time away from our desks. But then I filled the time I freed up with starting to write a book… and I can only write well at my desk… so I didn’t feel I benefitted in the way I hoped. This is going to be a key focus for me – I need to think more about how I’d like to spend my days.
What felt like progress last year?
I haven’t given this any thought but it’s worth finding reasons to congratulate yourself for whatever progress you made. I didn’t progress on a professional front and perhaps that’s the area that starts to slow down at this time of life – I’m going to think about that and whether I feel it matters to me or not. I think I did progress on a more personal level though and I want to take a moment to recognise that.
What matters most right now?
For me I suspect it’s relationships – partner/children/friends because that’s where so much of life’s joy comes from and yet I so often prioritise work over time spent with my favourite people. I know I particularly need to think about friendships and spend some time with the quieter people who don’t drive get togethers which means they drift
What does good health mean over the year ahead?
I’m sure you don’t need me to say this but… it’s worth focusing on staying as well as possible in midlife because otherwise the body suffers and needs to be fixed… which means medical appointments and intervention… I don’t think any of us want that. It takes effort and discipline but it can soon become a habit. I think about it as being like brushing my teeth, nobody wants to spend four minutes or more a day doing that but we do because we don’t want our teeth to fall out. It’s a lifelong wellness habit that’s a complete no brainer, every other bit of self care is just an extension of that.
So it’s a case of making a plan for the year that has periodisation in it – by that I mean accepting that there will be breaks such as holidays and weekends away – but then working out how to get back into a manageable discipline again at the other side. This year I’m going to make sure I get back into that habit and don’t slide like I did in 2024.
Where does adventure lie this year?
A sense of adventure is the thing that keeps you sparking. I moved beyond my comfort zone in a few ways last year and I haven’t yet assessed what I got from it. I need to do that and work out what adventure means for me as a result. Adventure doesn’t have to be trekking the Amazon, it can be as simple as trying a new hobby or changing the route you walk each day – it’s just about having a bit of friction in your life. It gives you something to think about, to talk about, it keeps you interested and interesting so it’s the best way of feeling that you still have life coursing through your veins.
The newbie – rest
This is a new one for me – I’ve never acknowledged or allowed for rest before but it needs to be incorporated more as part of the ageing well and happily project. I’m aware that I fill any free time I have with activity, I have a lifelong voice in my head that’s actually my mum’s (or in fact my grandfather’s I think). It chirps incessantly with one specific question on repeat, “is this the best use of your time?”. It’s started to exhaust me. I think I might be able to quieten it if I can define permitted rest… I don’t know whether that makes any sense but I need to be able to give it a verbal justification for stopping sometimes.
Seize the glimmers of joy
Joy – this is something I’m pretty good at seizing when it comes along but there are often small moments that I don’t acknowledge as fully as I could. Lots of people call them glimmers and I made a point of holding onto them over Christmas – little things like the moment when I spotted the eldest in the crowd of people getting off the London train at Lancaster station… Sugar the village cat staging a takeover of the carol service…
…and the point where we were all reduced to tears of laughter playing cards on Christmas Day.
I think the biggest achievement of my last few years has been identifying what brings me joy and it’s really the opportunity to lose myself in the flow of something. Music is a big thing, all the better for being live – and dancing, of course. Nature is another – if I can stop thinking on my daily walk and see what’s around me it’s a year round pleasure. Certain people also just seem to come with joy attached – it’s the old saying about appreciating the radiators in your life while deciding what to do about the drains. Sometimes the drains are people you have to support and so the radiators become even more precious. Then there’s exercise – when I’m coasting it becomes a chore but I have to remind myself that when I keep on building that too is a joy, even if it’s a struggle at the time. And there’s writing this blog, talking to all of you online and sometimes, gloriously in real life.
If there’s one thing I think everyone should think about in January it’s what brings joy, there are often things that don’t cost money. Sometimes we overlook them so I’m going to ask you to put yours in the comments to inspire other midlife women here. And I’m going to suggest that if you haven’t made a new year’s resolution, a good one is to aim to really feel the glimmers, those precious little moments that bubble up and surprise you.
And on that note I’m going to leave you with a little video moment that entertained us this Christmas because it’s the perfect illustration of what I’m trying to say. I don’t think you’ll have a problem spotting him but it features our youngest who, as you know, returned to uni in September after four full terms of living and working in France and Spain. His uni friends have graduated so although he’s in a house-share with them, student life has been very different this year. They all have jobs and are less keen to go out on a work night so he’s been lamenting the fun they used to have in their carefree days. Anyway just before the end of term he told me they were going to a jazz club to celebrate one of their birthdays which sounded very grown-up. As we were travelling back in the car after picking him up for Christmas I asked him how it had gone and groaning, he passed me his phone.
Apparently he’d woken up the following morning to find it full of messages asking him if he’d seen the band’s Instagram Stories. You see after their jazz set, they’d wrapped up with a quick set of anthems. This is the moment they posted, along with the caption “great venue, great crowd… particularly this guy, living his best life!”
Disclosure: ‘Ways to make the most of 2025’ is not a sponsored post
It’s such a great example of someone really feeling their glimmer of joy, just for a few moments – I think we all need to do more of that this year. Let’s all be the ones who feel it from fingers to toes instead of just tapping our feet and keeping it all inside. So do share anything that you’ve found brings joy in midlife, especially if it’s something new. I can imagine that I’m not the only one feeling a bit flat after Christmas so all ideas will be a pleasure to read. I didn’t know what I was going to write when I started today, the rest of my week has been all about analysis and numbers so it’s been good to talk to you again. I know the words haven’t flowed as well as usual though so I’m going to leave you with someone far better, Virginia Woolf, who had this to say.
Whatever happens, stay alive. Don’t die before you’re dead. Don’t lose yourself, don’t lose hope, don’t lose direction.
Stay alive with yourself, with every cell of your body, with every fibre of your skin.
Stay alive, learn, study, think, read, build, invent, create, speak, write, dream, design.
Stay alive, stay alive inside you, stay alive also outside, fill yourself with colours of the world, fill yourself with peace, fill yourself with hope.
Stay alive with joy.
There is only one thing you should not waste in life – and that’s life itself.
I’ll be back next Friday with something, I’m not sure what (let me know if there’s anything you’d like to discuss) and until then, happy new year – let’s hope it’s a good one!
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