Welcome to 2025 ... NOW, NEXT & No

The alphabet is happening this year.  The letter N pulled me in this week.  What are your plans for 2025? 

Transcript

00:00.42
Christina Scovel
Hello, hello, and welcome back to a pinch of honesty. You might hear, I don't know, I can hear a noise outside. Sounds like somebody's either blowing leaves or vacuuming their car. So, you know, welcome to that. Hopefully it isn't too off-putting in the podcast today. Welcome to 2025 and a new ah new year. um I have come up with a new idea for the pod for this year.

00:27.83
Christina Scovel
I'm still going to do Tarot Tuesdays. I'm really enjoying Tarot Tuesdays. I actually find that in general, pulling cards for Tuesdays, it it makes me think. And it also really recaptures, I think, some of the stuff that I want to focus on. So Tarot Tuesday shall continue. however What I did do was I took all the letters of the alphabet and I spread them out across the year and I randomly selected letters to kind of see what is fostered in me. What do I really want to talk about? Where do those letters kind of take me? And so um I used chat GPT, of course. Why would I not?

01:14.41
Christina Scovel
um And the letter that was selected for the first week of the year is the letter N. And I started thinking about the letter N last week. And of course, you know, with the new year rolling around, it made me think of new, it made me think of the word neo, natural, nature, neutral, all those types of words popped into my head. And then on the flip side, there was also no,

01:43.80
Christina Scovel
Miet, nil, nine, next. um And I found it very interesting that every time I started to think about the letter N, I really was drawn between this new and no, or next and nil, right? It was like flip sides yin-yang of a coin.

02:09.36
Christina Scovel
um And as most of you know, I had decided I definitely was not going to do a set of New Year's resolutions this year. I wasn't going to focus on this past year now. um But what I did do was I sat down and I thought about things around the house I wanted to finish up in 2025,

02:28.20
Christina Scovel
um areas where I wanted to spend some effort. Did I want to make a note of, you know, what did I really want to do? So, for example, you know, um I've got the novels I've been working on and the edits have come back from the editors. I really need to go through and finish those up. um I have a needle point that I've been working on for the past good gravy, I don't know, eight years or something. I should probably finish that up. um One of the things that I have not been as into as in the past is my watercolors and so

03:00.07
Christina Scovel
I decided that I am going to do one watercolor per week, so just 52 watercolors. I'm not going to push myself, but in that, I decided I had these huge sheets of watercolor paper that I had bought forever ago, and I decided to just rip them into pieces, and whatever piece happens happens, and whatever I'm feeling inspired to put on that piece of watercolor, I'm going to put on that piece of watercolor, and I have this beautiful jar that I'm thinking about just tucking them into, and letting me that like be part of my new creativity and to create for the sake of creating, not to look for perfection, which is, again, as most of you know, very hard for me, um but instead to really look for creating just an outlet, something that brings me peace. um And so, you know, that's on my list. Of course, there's other things like clean up subscriptions and

03:55.17
Christina Scovel
You know purge some things out of the hat like, you know, there's of course like the the standard Christina list of minimalism to try to to wrap up the year um that have fallen to 2025 and and and I think all those things are great, but um It the word new really made me think hmm, you know, this is a new year and so um How do I really want to approach it? And so I looked up ah New Year to see what Google had to tell me about New Year, and it came back with New Year, New You, American Horror. which you know At first I was like, New Year, New You, interesting. I wonder what they have to say about this. And so I went down the rabbit hole of of reading ah about ah New Year, New You online, and it is an episode of American Horror. um Nothing about becoming a New You.

04:53.10
Christina Scovel
And then the Washington Post actually had 100 quotes to roll you into 2025. And out of there, there were two that really stuck with me. The first is by Martin Luther King Jr. and it is, you don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.

05:14.14
Christina Scovel
And especially when looking at things like wrapping up edits and those types of things, which is daunting. It's huge. is it but It's a massive process. um It made me feel better, right? Just take the first step. I don't have to go up the entire staircase. Just take the first step. um As we've talked about in the past, this is one of those things where procrastination hits hard. And to get over it, really just that that initial, even if it's a partial step, it gets you part of the way there. so um For those of you that are out there that are kind of languishing a little bit or wondering where you really want to go, take the first step, one one tiny step. The second quote out of this hundred quotes that really stuck with me, and I don't know who this person is, I probably should Google her, um is somebody named Hilary DePiano. And her quote is, we all get the exact same 365 days. The only difference is what we do with them.

06:12.59
Christina Scovel
um And I would say that's not, it's not something new. It's not, it's not a quote that blows you away, but it is a, it is a quote that kind of sticks with me, right? It's just, it's 365 days. So how do I really want to spend all 365 days? And given the fact that, you know, we are already on, um, day five, January 5th. So five of those 365 are basically gone. Um, what have you been focusing on?

06:39.82
Christina Scovel
I went to chat GPT and asked it for what is the number one N word that is used in English language. And of course it came back with no. That is the most commonly used word. um No was my daughter's second word. The first word was cat. ah Her second word was no and her third word was dad. It actually says a lot about her that that's the order of words that she spoke.

07:06.60
Christina Scovel
Um, word number two that is most commonly used in English language is not. So two, I would say negative words, right? No and not are the first two. Um, the third word, however, that is most commonly used, it starts with the letter N is now. And I was like, now, huh?

07:28.27
Christina Scovel
You know, all of the words that are out there now is number um three. Now, you could take it out as negative, right? Like if you're trying to get your kid to do something like do it now. um But I actually take that to be a positive right now, the present, be in the present, um be part of the present, be now, right?

07:46.67
Christina Scovel
um out of my 1227 quite interesting facts book I decided to look up ends and of course there's all kinds of ends that are in here there's things about Nazis there's All kinds of things up with the letter N. But the two that I decided to focus on were the word nipple. So sucking the king's nipple was a gesture of submission in ancient Ireland. There you go. Maybe you're Irish. Who knows? And the other was about neutrinos. So every three seconds, the sun emits more neutrinos than the number of atoms in all the humans who have ever lived.

08:29.53
Christina Scovel
That just blew me away, right? My husband worked on neutrinos, that fact, wow, wow, really? um

08:43.74
Christina Scovel
With all of that, with the letter N, with now, with the new year, with no. um I am feeling quite optimistic for this year. I received a number of pieces of bad news over the past handful of days, and I've decided that from what... How do I how do i how do i really want to state this? There are shitty things that have happened, and part of me really honestly feels like that is just life, right?

09:19.58
Christina Scovel
Um, we all get dealt what we get dealt. And I honestly believe there's not a lot of rhyme or reason to how things roll down. And yeah I think it's how we deal with them, how we look towards the future that really determines, um, how, how, how bright your future is, right? With the negative things coming in, it's easy to stop and be like,

09:46.18
Christina Scovel
you know, things are crap, things are crap, things are crap. And instead, I've decided that I'm just gonna look on the positive sides of things. So and I had a friend who called me and told me about cancer that she's dealing with. And she is taking this insanely beautiful high road of I'm just gonna get through all the things I need to get through and I'm just gonna live every single day to its fullest. And it reminds me that we aren't guaranteed tomorrow.

10:16.13
Christina Scovel
So with that, with the new year, with the glorious letter N, um I wish you a happy 2025. And I'm so grateful for every single one of you. And I will keep you up to date on where I'm at with my progress and how things are rolling on each and every one of the podcasts. So with that, I'll catch you on the flip side.