5 Good Things: Small Goals for 2025
Sometimes the smallest action impacts the most.
THE GREAT WALL
In the new year, I feel like in order to achieve exponential growth in all areas of my life, I’m going to put up walls. The healthy kind that’s 1/2 personal boundaries and 1/2 the little voice inside your brain repeating “you gotta be more adventurous this time around.” The wall I’m referring to is one where anything from my past life, has no business entering this new life. No more repeat offenders, that goes for people that irked me, wronged me, even negative thoughts whether fearful or insecure, I’ll be shutting all of those down. When I come across a situation that’s frustrating or hurtful, I’ll stop, take a few seconds to ask myself, is what I’m feeling right now how I felt last year? If the answer is yes, then up goes the wall. I don’t know if this is even psychologically healthy, but when the world drives you mad, wouldn’t it be safer to put some blinders on and get on with life.
POST IT
I’m going to leave post-it notes in random places. The bodega and public bathroom mirrors have been a favorite of mine. Quick love notes to a stranger, hopefully that stranger will pass it on to another stranger. There was a summer when this was all I did, and I can’t remember why I stopped.
THAT TIME OF THE MONTH
A few years ago a woman approached me on the street, actually I felt like she had been following me for a good 2 blocks. So much that when I abruptly stopped to play the trick of texting my imaginary friend so that I could turn around and walk the other direction, she walked up to me and calmly asked if I had a tampon or a maxi pad. She had that look on her face, the kind when you’re at your most vulnerable and worrisome that people are looking at you and can see everything (you know). In fact I did have one tampon in my bag and gladly gave it to her. Then I noticed her shoes, her jeans, her hoodie that she wore on that cold winter evening. I apologized for only having one tampon, the smile and look of relief that came over her face forced me to want to do more for her. As women, we’ve all been in this position, but not all of us have been in the position that her life was in. There was a Duane Reade up the street and I asked her if it was okay if I bought her a few things, mainly a box of tampons. She smiled and walked with me, but insisted on waiting outside the store. I rushed to get a few things into a basket, a box of 18 tampons, a box of 8 maxi pads, a bottle of ibuprofen, a bag of cookies and a bottled water. I had never shopped this fast for myself, let alone a complete stranger. On the way to the register was a stand of polyester scarves, one quickly went into the basket. At the register I got $20 cash back and placed it securely inside the bag. I walked back outside where she greeted me with a big smile and I handed off the bag. No cheesy sentiments were exchanged, we parted ways. She was all I thought about on the rest of my walk. It dawned on me that she followed me, because maybe I looked safe to her, which not gonna lie, is something to take pride in. I can be one of the good ones. Then by chance, the day after this happened, I read something on some online article how socks and menstrual supplies were the 2 most requested items in homeless shelters. I don’t want women to have to be on the lookout for a safe looking person just to ask for a sanitary napkin or the like. It shouldn’t be like that. So, every month I’m going to donate boxes of tampons to a homeless shelter, because I can afford to do that on my budget and it’s so worth it.
86 AMAZON
I’m not going to stand on a soapbox and declare that I’ll stop giving my money to Amazon. Because I do like to shop on it, simply for convenience. I don’t have the personal will to stand inside a Target and press a call button and wait for at least 5 minutes so that I can grab a shampoo bottle when it takes three seconds to hop on my phone and purchase it. However, I want to start somewhere and it will be with books. As my tbr list for 2025 grows stealthily, I’m choosing to only buy books at either small book shops or on independent book e-com like Bookshop, which spotlights indie book sellers around the world and also has every book that Amazon has and probably more. This is the easiest of all my goals for the year.
JUST ME
Boldly and simply, I am going to do things that I want and not what others expect of me. The right people who know me will understand, the wrong people will just have to get over it and that’s how I’ll know.
Something tells me that 2025 is meant to be a long road, with more challenges, but also a brighter light nearing the end of the dark tunnel. Please excuse the heaviness of that sentence, but we make goals, resolutions, promises to ourselves in order for us to feel like we’re trying. And that is totally okay.
Ending this final newsletter for the year with a brief interaction I had the day after Christmas. I stopped off at Goodwill with a big bag of clothing donations and as I handed it off to the male worker, we exchanged holiday goodbyes, but he also included a “you stay safe okay”. I was already walking away when he said that, and it did something to me. Other than my dad who is passed, I cannot remember a time when a man, not even my brother, has ever told me to stay safe, especially not a stranger. I took a deep breath in, exhaled and filed that one interaction as a good omen and nothing else. A reminder that we all just need to look out for one another.
So here goes to 2025. Nothing changes if nothing changes.
Cheers,
DNAMAG
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