Last year, my word of the year was ‘Ease’.
And I don’t mean ‘ease’ in a Pinterest-y, bubble bath, “romanticize your life” kind of way. I mean ‘ease’ as a filter. A rule. A boundary I desperately needed.
Every decision ran through the same question.
What’s the easiest choice?
What apartment should we live in in Playa?
What school should our son go to?
Do we do the extracurricular or not?
Where do we eat tonight?
What shoes am I wearing today?
Not what’s the best option.
Not what’s the most optimized.
Not what’s the cheapest, or the most impressive, or the one that proves I’m doing life “right.”
Just… what’s easiest?
And honestly? It grounded us.
It kept us on the same page as a family.
It took the constant low-grade stress out of decision-making.
It stopped me from spiralling over every tiny fork in the road like the wrong choice would somehow ruin everything.
I didn’t have to weigh five schools against each other.
I didn’t have to interrogate every expense.
I didn’t have to justify my choices to myself.
‘Ease’ took a weight off my chest.
And I don’t regret it. Not for a second.
Towards the end of the year, I started to feel something else underneath it all.
Not dissatisfaction.
Not restlessness.
Just this quiet awareness that life was… moving fast.
That days were passing whether I was present for them or not.
That time was doing its thing, very efficiently, without waiting for me to catch up.
I didn’t want to move at other people’s pace anymore.
I wanted to set my own.
Which brings me to this year’s theme.
I’m calling it The Year of Slow Exposure.
It took me a minute to get there. I knew what I wanted the feeling to be long before I found the words. I wanted something that could hold my whole life, not just my business. Something grounding. Something that didn’t demand urgency or perfection.
The idea came to me when I thought about picking up an old hobby again.
I’ve always loved photography. I actually brought two analogue cameras with me to Playa. Film forces you to slow down. You don’t snap and immediately check the result. You compose. You wait. You trust the process. Sometimes you don’t even know if it worked until much later.
That idea stuck with me.
Slow exposure is about letting things reveal themselves over time.
That’s the energy I want everywhere.
That’s how I feel about my work with my body image right now too. I am taking on body recomposition because it isn’t flashy. It’s not instant. It’s subtle, cumulative, almost boring in the day-to-day. You don’t wake up different. You look back months later and realize something has shifted.
In my business, I’m letting things percolate instead of forcing them. WTFunnel?!? has been living in my brain and heart for a long time. This year, I’m not rushing to fill it overnight. I’m letting it grow over the course of the year, at a pace that feels sustainable and aligned.
Creatively, I’m leaning into photography and watercolour. Things that don’t ask for output on demand. Things that let me experiment without an audience.
With my family, it looks like not rushing my son out the door in the morning. Not pushing our evenings to fit some imaginary productivity standard. Letting time stretch a little.
This year didn’t start the way I usually like. I’m an all-or-nothing person. I love a clean January 1st. New notebook. New plan. Let’s go.
But with the passing of my father-in-law, everything slowed down, whether I wanted it to or not. Grief doesn’t care about your timelines. It quietly rewrites them.
So, instead of forcing myself to sprint out of the gate, I’m letting this year begin when it actually feels ready. February 1st, maybe. Or whenever it settles into my bones.
Which feels… on theme.
Slow exposure isn’t a challenge. It’s a practice.
It’s choosing presence over pace.
Depth over immediacy.
Trust over urgency.
I don’t have a neat bow to tie on this. I’m still inside it.
But I wanted to share it anyway.
Sometimes that’s enough.
