At the start of last year, I sat down with the best of intentions.

I planned goals for my career, my finances, my home, my relationships, my health. I even made goals for my dog.

I was coming off two very stressful years that had completely exhausted me. After taking a month off in October 2024, I knew something had to change. Setting goals for 2025 felt like the responsible thing to do… a structured way to reset after burnout.

At the same time, I was deeply involved in a startup I’d helped grow from the ground up. I built brand foundations that helped them land early investments, created characters and products that users could relate to, and helped establish an in-house creative team. I cared deeply about the company and the people within it. But by the end of 2024, it was clear that my involvement had become draining. What once felt meaningful was now pulling energy from other areas of my life.

Despite all my careful planning, the year didn’t unfold the way I expected.

It started with a series of doctor’s appointments to address an infection in my lymphatic system. By March - barely two months into the year - I walked out of my doctor’s office, reduced my involvement in the startup, and quietly threw my annual goals out the window. I chose to prioritize only my health instead.

It wasn’t a dramatic declaration. It was a recalibration I hadn’t planned for, and one that ended up teaching me far more than any goal-setting exercise ever had.

Before I go any further, I want to be honest: recalibrating my life was more uncomfortable than being in the middle of my messiest, most stressful seasons. Coming down from years of chronic stress felt destabilizing.

Recalibration felt like simultaneous boredom and an inability to do anything. It came with persistent questions about whether I’d ever really work again - even though I was still working, just in a way that felt so calm it barely registered. It also brought up a lot of shame and guilt. How had I been so caught up in work and other people’s urgency that I’d lost touch with my own body?

What this year showed me is that most annual planning assumes certainty. It assumes you’ll feel the same in December as you do in January. And for me, that simply isn’t true.

If you’d asked me for my word of the year on January 1, 2025, I probably would’ve said something like “joy” or “balance.” But the only word that actually fits my year is fibre… not the internet kind, the nutrient.

It sounds ridiculous, but stay with me.

Fibre’s main job is to support digestion. It promotes steadiness, regulates systems, and keeps things moving gently. It’s not glamorous or exciting. It works best when it’s consistent, not dramatic.

In practice, fibre is supportive, unsexy, essential, and something you need regularly.

When I started taking better care of myself this year, nutrition became a focal point. I’d always wanted to understand nutrients, but without a clear motivator, I didn’t know where to start. Ironically, when I began paying attention to fibre and overall nourishment, the rest of my life started to clear itself out too and things I’d been meaning to grow for years finally had the space to bloom.

By mid-year, I had fully parted ways with the startup. I stopped forcing things that felt resistant. I made fewer plans, but better ones.

The space I created gave me:

• More energy and genuine joy in social interactions

• Clarity after reflecting on the first decade of my career

• The ability to enjoy work without being shaken by sudden pivots

• The confidence to say no without second-guessing myself

• A renewed connection to making work I actually like

• The ability to notice small moments and turn them into art

What surprised me most was that none of these changes came from trying harder or setting better goals. They came from choosing what I could actually digest - in my body, in my work, and in my life.

Looking back, the problem wasn’t that I didn’t plan enough. It was that I planned too far ahead, assuming certainty where there wasn’t any. Annual planning asks us to commit to a version of ourselves we haven’t met yet, while ignoring the quieter signals we’re getting right now.

So moving forward, I’m planning differently. Smaller. Slower. In seasons instead of years. I’m asking questions like:

• What feels supportive right now?

• What’s keeping things moving gently instead of forcing progress?

• What can I sustain without borrowing from my future self?

That’s what fibre means to me now. Not optimization. Not ambition. Just steady support.

There were plenty of professional wins this year: projects I’m proud of, work that landed, ideas that finally clicked. But my greatest accomplishment was much smaller.

It was going to the movies on a random Tuesday afternoon… and not feeling the urge to open my laptop when I got home.

No goals attached. No to-do list to return home to. Just enough fibre to let the rest of my life move along.