and... release (reprise)
welcoming a year of letting go
Note: I have divided this post in 3 parts that you can read at your leisure — before, now (2024), and after (2025).
Alright, buckle up, this is a long one…
2024 has come and gone, and with that comes my yearly reflection.
I was especially looking forward to it this year—around this time last December, I had my first vision board party with my sister. We spent a whole day reflecting on the year that had passed, making Pinterest boards with photos of what we hoped to focus on and accomplish in 2024.
I don’t know that I’ll plan every year as ambitiously as I planned 2024 (famous last words), but I have to say that having clearly defined long-term goals that I could fall back to gave each moment a clearer sense of purpose, and it made even the most trivial decision-making at least a bit more intentional. I always had to choose to take a break, or choose to sleep in an extra 15 minutes. When I chose to doomscroll, I was painfully aware of exactly what I was taking time off of as a direct result (spoiler: it was always sleep).
01. Before
In his video “4 life-changing books to read this year”, Ali Abdaal reads a few quotes from David Brooks’ “The Second Mountain”, and this one stood out to me:
“In the aesthetic way of life, each individual day is fun, but it doesn’t seem to add up to anything.”
I think this quote captures very nicely a feeling I was left with from my early 20’s. I think when I left home at 18, I was really set on living a life that was full, to experience everything there was to experience, if you may. I feared feeling stuck, or that the limits of what I could accomplish would plateau. It was important to me to do great things.
This nagging urge has driven me to live some of the most exciting, adventurous experiences in my very short life, so it would be silly to say I regret it in the least. I was secretly proud to share my instagram account with new people in my life, just so they could see how cool the life I carried was. I think for a bit it felt like I was doing great things because they were pretty things, shocking things, unconventional things.
But come the end of every year, I couldn’t shake the feeling off that as my pretty collection of places, experiences, and adventures grew, I felt more disconnected from myself, and the people around me. To keep it short, I wasn’t really sure what all these exciting moments led to. They were all dead ends, that individually were exciting, but collectively didn’t align with any bigger purpose for myself, because I had no bigger purpose in sight. I’m not saying this is a bad way to live; it just wasn’t working for me anymore. What had started as a quest to live a life that was full wasn’t really there anymore; now I was just living an exciting life cause I had nothing else to do otherwise.
I think ultimately my quest to live a life that is full still rings true to me, but I think my definition of a “fulfilling life” has changed drastically in the last couple of years; and there was simply a lag in pivoting my actions so that they met my new definition.
So this year was about pivoting. It hasn’t been an easy thing to do, and I’m still working on defining what that fulfilling life is for myself, but when the media and the people around you define “fulfilling” one way, I admit it’s hard to quiet the noise all the time.
Which is why I feel so indescribably happy of how this year has gone for me. It wasn’t perfect, but I stayed true to the decisions and choices that aligned most with me more often than I have ever before. It was an incredibly hard year, possibly one of the hardest, if not the hardest yet. I’ve had so many hesitations, and breakdowns, and sometimes the hard work simply! wouldn’t! end! If I think about it hard enough, I can still feel the heavy mornings when the day would hit me for the first time, and I truly could not believe the day, let along the week, sometimes even the month I had ahead of me. But as I sit up on this ledge for just a minute and look down, conscious of the long, long, long climb still ahead of me, I am proud of the me that’s pushed through every day this year and showed up so flawed, and authentic, and sometimes, with a bit of luck, triumphant.
02. Now — 2024
If you made it this far, I will now be sharing my 2024 vision board. This year I made two versions, 1) the classic list-style new year’s resolution, and 2) a pretty, Pinterest-inspired visual vision board, that was my desktop and phone wallpaper during most of the year.
First, an overview of some quick goals. This will look familiar to you if you’ve read my 2023 recap:
Books read: 15 (Goal, 26) → This was also the number of books I read last year, and honestly it was hard to even match last year’s amount! This year, my resolution is to move away from non-fiction and go back to my fiction roots! It’ll be good for my brain and reading habits. I’m hoping to take reading less seriously, and now that I’ve officially quit social media (see more below), I have admittedly been reading a lot more (4 books this last month!)
Miles ran: 300 miles (Goal, 500) → This was ~150 miles less than last year and 200 short from my 2024 goal. I developed a sort of unhealthy relationship with my pace this year, so I stopped recording my runs. Truthfully, I’m not sure how much I’ve ran, and it might be more than that, but I don’t think it matters much. This year, I will be focusing more on technique and consistency rather than distance or pace.
Miles swam: 48 miles (Goal, 50) → honestly, freaking proud. I did not see this one coming.
Miles biked: 547 miles (Goal, 500) → !!!
Total dives: +200 dives (goal, 25) → This was insane. Unlikely to happen again but still, insane.
Now, here’s some of the goals I set for myself in 2024 + some reflections!
I moved to Canada to complete a master’s in machine learning! The story of how this came to be is drafted somewhere on this Substack, but the tl;dr is I do not remember many other times in my life where one single spontaneous decision changed my life for the better so! much! I truly feel so aligned with the skills, career, and work I want to be doing.
I got a position as a research assistant in a computer science lab!
Completed a full year of filmmaking classes at UCSD! From screenwriting, to science writing, to scripting techniques, video & sound editing, to photography and documentary classes, I completed the equivalent of a minor (or associate’s) in filmmaking. Producing one short film, 2 short documentaries, 2 podcast & short doc collabs, and two short scripts — all in one year!
One of my short experimental stories was exhibited at UC San Diego art show.
I submitted my underwater documentary to two film festivals, and while it wasn’t selected for either, it was long-listed for the San Diego Environmental Film Festival, and will be played on selected events in 2025! I also got to premiere this short at a friend’s art exhibition, and the doc has been played in elementary schools in SD! Also, simply working on these projects solidified my love for this art and its collaborative nature, and I will spend a big portion of this upcoming year improving my craft.
Most importantly — I have become more comfortable with sharing my work at early stages, receiving feedback, and overall embracing the discomfort that comes from sharing unfinished work :)
I completed my first half ironman in September 2024! With how much has happened this year, it is crazy to me that I legitimately trained every. single. day. leading up to September 2024. My coach passed as my therapist many times this year, but ultimately the work that I put in was so holistic, it wasn’t about the race at all!
learn to listen to my body — I lived a big portion of this year fatigued. I had to take bloodwork and deal with iron and B12 deficiency multiple times. Part of attempting to do this race on a mostly plant-based diet also meant improving my plant-based diet. This year, I will be switching up to mostly whole-foods plant-based.
sleep — possibly my biggest hurdle this year. I simply couldn’t fit it all, and my sleep would always take the biggest hit. I hope when I read this post next year I can smile at myself because somehow I figured out how to rest well :)
meditate — this year, thanks to my coach, I probably meditated more than I have any other year in my life (~70-80% of the year). I can’t say I had less breakdowns this year (I may have had even more), but I also feel the most lucid, and aware of my emotions and shortcomings than I ever have before. (and isn’t that what meditating is about?)
my relationship with social media: I have at least two fully-written drafts on my Substack in regards to social media, so I definitely have lots to say about the matter. This year I reflected heavily on what I wanted my relationship to be with it moving forward. Here’s the tl;dr:
I posted content for 30 days in a row. I wanted to experience what consistent instagram content creation felt like. While I must admit it is intense, hard, time-consuming work that I could see leading to fulfilling results, I’m not sure it nurtured the lifestyle I’m looking for; creation felt reactive and too fast-paced for my liking; and I couldn’t see any one singular post, or even the culmination of many posts, being something I ever became proud of or felt rewarded by. In other words, it felt like time spent on the wrong thing for me. I think given where I am in my creative stage, I would like to focus more on long-form content and longer-term collaborative projects that could improve my craft, and short-form content creation would just take meaningful time from other projects. Since I concluded I wasn’t going to use social media for content creation, I realized most of my time online now was decidedly spent as a consumer, which is why:
I went off social media for 50 days. Conversely, this did wonders for my mental health (and ultimately my decision-making). With how many big life decisions I had to make this year, I didn’t want my people-pleasing attitude or my anxiety over what people think of me influence my decisions, so I decided to quit social media for about two months. I still felt like I was online though, my account was up and I felt the need to log back in, if not to use social media, at least to make sure people weren’t trying to reach me over Instagram; I would also still share my handles whenever I met someone new, so it was hard to identify with not having social media. I realized the situation demanded a deeper cleanse. I wasn’t ready then, but after moving to Canada and easing into my new routines, this felt as good a time as any, so:
I permanently deleted my social media. I’m inspired by Cal Newport’s “Digital minimalism” and I’m starting off the year with no social media. It’s been about a month now since I deleted it, and while it is something I’ve been struggling with on an identity level, it absolutely feels like the right call at this time in my life. I will write more about this in the months to come. But I’m convinced that social media became an obstacle to meaningfully connecting with people. I thought it was my way to stay in touch with people after moving countries so many times. But in this past two months I’ve made more meaningful friendships, had more meaningful rekindling with old friends, and I’ve realized, respectfully, I don’t want to give a fuck about what’s going on online anymore.
I think if I ever go back to social media, it will be because I miss documenting my life. But I think my need to document will never stop, and I’m realizing I might as well use that need to produce and practice producing long-form content I’m more proud of — like these longer reflections, or scripts for video essays I can look back at.
I quit my job and made my first $100 outside of my 9-5! I gave myself this goal mainly so I could keep my eyes open for any side-hustle opportunities. I know I could’ve easily earned $100 on doordash or uber eats, but the goal was to make something sustainable that would either help me earn career capital, or at the very least be a good use of my time, even if money was never involved. I basically wanted to work towards a lifestyle where I felt confident quitting my corporate job, knowing that I would be financially okay. Completing this goal has admittedly given me the highest form of freedom and self-confidence this year :)
I bought a house! I still cannot believe this was a thing that happened this year (like I said, this year was very, very, very long), but I started off the year with a pretty adult-like change to my life! While we were off to a bumpy start, the house is a steady source of passive income now (and I cannot tell you how great that is as a student)
I landed my first freelancing/consulting gig: as many things in life, this kinda just happened to me, but I was very lucky with the timing, since being a student meant I needed flexibility with time and location. So I’m now offering my services at my own time and pricing, which is insane to me!
I became a SCUBA instructor (and Yoga teacher)! Again, this all happened THIS year. I’m not sure I can stress enough how exhausting and time-consuming becoming a dive instructor is; I was doing this while working full-time, going to school, AND training for a half-ironman. This was hands-down the hardest part of my year (up until that time). That said, I was lucky to immediately start teaching in San Diego, and then get referred to a shop in Canada! I would honestly do this gig for free, so the fact I get paid (and so much free scuba gear shit) is insane to me!
I got to make content for NOAA Fisheries and CalCOFI! It is true what they say that working with government is s l o w. But the fact that this started as an early 2023 dream and became a reality in 2024 was wild to me! It was great to do some storyboarding with people from NOAA and work collaboratively with scientists and animators! I could very much see myself going back to this sort of work.
Knock on wood, as long as I don’t get any permanent back injuries, all these things together make me un-unemployable, and that sort of career capital feels like freedom to me. At some point I will go back to having a full-time job, but it feels good to know it is something I don’t depend on at the moment, and gives me more freedom to choose something that truly aligns with what I want to work on. Ultimately, I’m feeling optimistic about the sort of stuff I’ll be able to work on thanks to my master’s, and I hope it gives me more time to focus on my storytelling and filmmaking crafts.
I set time for my loved ones intentionally. Back in 2022, I promised myself (and the world via social media) that gone were the days of catching up over coffee. I was neck-deep in dinner dates and saturday brunches, bored of the interview-like meetups that happened once a year and left me feeling with the temporary ick. It’s not always been perfect, because I still care a little too much that people have a good time and still get anxiety over planning things, but if 2023 was the year of planning spontaneous road trips with friends, 2024 was a year of planning ahead (+ being cute and sending e-vites, making group chats and whatnot!). Some highlights:
planned a trip with K to go to Spain over the summer.
Caught up with college friends by planning a community art exhibition
Send e-vites across the continent for my housewarming party! Hosted my first official house party with friends from college, high-school, and post-college life!
planned a girls florida universal trip! <3
planned a Hamilton date with the girls MONTHS IN ADVANCE! (Finally saw hamilton live!)
High-school friends + college friend group trip to Vancouver!
Organized a vancouver dim-sum breakfast for my cohort so we could all get to know each other :)
Okay, making this list made me emotional and very thankful for my friends. While a lot of the hard-work this year was done in private, it has been very rewarding to share adventures that I used to do by myself with my friends.
Maybe it is that I always paint each year pink in my memory come the end of it, or maybe it is that after 12-months of non-stop hustling, these last 10 days I have truly done nothing, and now feel rested — but I have to say I feel truly grateful, and for this bit of life, happy. But, as Ethan would like to remind me, he has never seen me more stressed and emotional than he did this year. So I think it’s worth saying that this year was incredibly hard, and I often thought I wasn’t quite built for it. But I think what made this year different to previous hard years, was that even as I endured through the discomfort, I knew it was something I had to get through. I never thought, I don’t want to go through this, it was always “It is important I go through this.”
So I’ve taken note of the wins and the losses, and I think I’m generally moving in the right direction; and as that direction becomes clearer, I think so does letting go of more and more things down the road, so my goals next year build off from here.
03. After — 2025
December has become a month for me of test-running goals in a lower-stake environment. Nobody expects much of you this month socially, or academically, or even professionally (even as an athlete, really), so it feels like a good time to try new things while everybody is especially minding their own businesses.
Here’s a few things I tried this month:
De-activating social media → I’ve met a few people this month, and to stay in touch, we’ve exchanged numbers instead! This has actually led to a lot more in-person hangouts, or just random favors, since it’s the only reason one would chat anyway. I am slowly realizing that the friends and connections I craved and looked for in social media were not there to be found! I keep meeting more and more people that simply don’t exist online, and it feels like a self-affirming journey.
switched to whole foods plant-based → I developed an uncharacteristically and unhealthy sweet tooth this year, and so this is my attempt to become more intentional with the sugars and fat I consume. I am now making my own WFPB desserts at home and bringing them with me when I leave the house!
no more non-fiction → I have almost exclusively read non-fiction for the past 4 years, with about 2-4 books every year that are an exception. I think I’ve reached a point of diminishing returns and honestly, I’m exhausted from trying to optimize every second of the day. So, for every 3 fiction books I read this year, I get to choose 1 non-fiction book; hopefully this will allow me to be more intentional about the non-fiction I read, and still incentivize reading more fiction.
no more music → I think if you’re someone who constantly searches for new music, this may not be for you. But the problem with me is I will obsessively listen to the same 10 songs for two months until my brain can’t take it, and honestly I’m pretty sure it’s not healthy. Not only is it time I could spend listening to a podcast or a book (which is often what I want to do, but my brain is stuck in the music loop), but also I could just simply be sitting in silence — and, wouldn’t that be so nice for a change?
spontaneous phone calls → okay, so, no social media, no music, what do I do with my time now? The amount of free time I have now for calls is ridiculous! I call people on my walks, on my drives, in the morning while I’m prepping a meal, it’s so fun! These aren’t your formally scheduled, let’s-have-a-catch-up call, but rather, a random what-are-you-up-to call! It’s been lovely to intrude, and once again feel participatory in the life of some of my friends.
embrace the creativity that comes from boredom. It feels weird to say, but I haven’t caught myself having many thoughts as of lately. Yesterday, for example, I hung out with a group of people I’d just met, and on my drive back in silence, I caught myself in the habitual “taking inventory of the night” thinking pattern, that inevitably leads to the thought “what did they think of me?”. But the moment that thought materialized in my brain, a different, more intentional thought came up of “I don’t want to have to go through this thinking.” And I stopped, and went back to I silent mind. I think overall, I just feel less anxious, and anxiety was a big thing for me this year. Embracing this boredom and a digitally minimal lifestyle feels almost childlike. I can’t help but think about my early childhood and adolescence, which felt like really wholesome and curious times in my life. :)
I read this recently almost verbatim, so I wish I could credit it, but I don’t remember where. But, when you’re a kid, it so often feels like everything is forever. I think I’ve only recently started to realize how short a year really is. So, as things become less permanent, it’s easier for me to set goals that serve a purpose of experimenting with my life, rather than permanently changing something about myself. I don’t think I intent to never listen to music again, or read non-fiction, or even have social media, and I think viewing these cleanses as temporary experiments provides so much more value in the long-term, and allows me to be more compassionate with myself, and attuned to what I currently need.
These small goals also allow me to appreciate the impact of seemingly small corrections, and how, these small corrections of a few degrees ultimately change my trajectory immensely in the longer term. When I think about my long-term goals as an athlete, filmmaker, science communicator, or even researcher, it feels silly to say my new year’s resolutions hardly have anything to do with the sort of stuff that conventionally gets you to become any of these people. But I would argue that minimizing distractions is a no-brainer, and spotting distractions becomes a unique task for any individual; and it is this level of scrutinizing and long-term thinking that actually yields results, and not only that, but prepares you for the realization that it is a long, long, and slow way ahead that, at its best, will be humbling and frustrating.
I think this framework also allows me to embrace the finitude and limitations of this lifetime. To embrace that I won’t get it all at once, or even at all, which is so often a problem I struggle with. As my 20’s are (hardly) coming to an end, I am inevitably forced to look at the longer picture of this decade and what I want it to mean and bring, and that so many things that I furiously wanted at some point or another (like being an olympic triathlete, or getting a PhD, or traveling the world, or being a natgeo explorer), while still possible in this lifetime, are not possible all at once, and to some degree, thinking about these final goals is incredibly distracting from the hard, long work that any of these dreams actually takes.
So, I will be taking these little goals onto my 2025, and embracing the mindset of just letting go, by:
saying no to more events, conferences, opportunities — disappear for a bit if necessary
being intentional with my time— I don’t need to be everywhere. Focus on my craft first (filmmaking, writing, and research), trust that things will follow eventually
being ok with missing out and disappearing — everything will still be there in its own way
letting go of expectations about people, experiences, events — accepting things as they truly are
Some more goals:
produce some meaningful output from my research at the lab (as meaningful as one can do in 6 months, to be fair.)
finalize a design prototype I’m working on by the end of summer
only consume (intentional) medium/long-form content online
bi-monthly reflection and recap posts on substacks!
bring my camera on walks — dedicate sundays for shooting and video editing!
on that note, take a stab at video essays! I really want to work on that this year.
interview people — improve/practice my storytelling
Ethan got me my first tascam + lav mic for christmas (!!!!), so I really do not have an excuse anymore.
do 1 paid film gig — editing, scripting, color grading, shooting — any of these is fine, ideally in adventure/outdoors creative space
produce 1 short doc this year!
get my self-reliant diver certification so I can solo dive and shoot more underwater footage → publish more underwater footage
carry a notebook with me, again (I attempted to move to digital this year, but ultimately resulted in less note-taking and journaling)
only post on substack and youtube (I aim to consume and produce exclusively longer-form content)
Some challenges I will be attempting this year! :
100 days of running at least 1 mile → starting Jan 1st - Apr 11th
100 days of meditating for 5 mins → starting Jan 1st - Apr 11th
65 days going whole food plant-based → starting Jan 1st - March 6th
30 days of pilates everyday → (this one is for my off-season from triathlons + I’d like to work on my posture, core, and glutes) tentatively start Jan 5th - February 5th (still figuring out if I can afford this)
30 days of waking up at 5:30a → I’m just putting this one here but not sure when I want to do this (I’ve been really struggling with sleep if it isn’t obvious by now). Maybe Jan 5th?
30 days of no streaming platforms or music → starting Jan 1st - Jan 31st
I will let you know how these go sometime in February. It looks like a lot but I feel like these work pretty well together. The only thing I’m admittedly scared about is Pilates, but it is low-impact enough that it should be okay.
Some important events I’m looking forward to this year:
I’m starting a marine bio grad program at Scripps this June! — I am so excited to be going back to Scripps, and hopefully continue my work with NOAA Fisheries and CalCOFI. Before I left I got pretty involved with their content strategy, and with some documentary production companies and first nation tribes, so I’m looking forward to going back and continuing that work.
Attending my graduation ceremony for my machine learning master’s in november! — yes, the ceremony happens at a weird time long after the program is over, but it’ll technically be my first real graduation, since I didn’t have one during COVID.
Ice diving and ice climbing! — okay, I’m not 100% sure these will happen, but things are lining up this winter season so that they might! We will see.
That’s kind of it! I don’t have many big events planned for this year and I think I’m looking forward to keeping it this way. I want to spend most of my time honing in on storytelling and research and learning. In the big scheme of things, I think if I miss out on a couple of things here and there this year as a result of that, it will be okay.
And finally, some quotes that always get me through the hustle:
“Process saves us from the poverty of our intentions.” — Elizabeth King
“The reward of good work is the ability to do more good work.” — Jonas Salk
“We do not ask life what the meaning of life is. Life asks us, what is the meaning of your life. And life demands and answer.” — Victor Frankl
“We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” — T.S. Eliot
some final words
As always, thanks for sticking around for this journey, and through all the pivots and course changes. This is still one of the projects I’m most thankful for having started, and each of these posts comes from a place of so much love, vulnerability, and compassion.
When I began posting online, I was needing a lot of validation. As much as I loved sharing what I did, it was also about getting something from people, producing a thought in their heads. Being seen a certain way. I’m not so sure these things matter to me as much anymore. I’m more aware of the things I have failed on, and I feel more capable of giving myself the grace I need. There’s some things I’m inevitably not as good at, and some I feel I’m quite good at —or at least could be, and I feel both a desire and responsibility to make good use of these skills. Maybe it is that my frontal lobe is fully developed now (😅), but I feel—in a way—more released from expectations to others. So there’s a sense of freedom now: When no one is looking, and when there’s no one to reward me, and no ego to protect or please—what do I actually want to do? What do I want to say? What feels the most me, and how can I bring the most joy?
Thanks for reading —I anticipate a rebranding of this newsletter is due soon this year, too. :)
If something here resonated with you, or you too have goals that you would like to share, feel free to reach out by commenting, or messaging, or simply replying to this email :) I look forward to more meaningful conversations this year!
Wishing you a 2025 filled with alignment, love, and support 🤍
Much love,
Nicole 🌊