Personal Goals for 2025

Art, Lavender, Travel, and More

It’s 2025, and I have big plans. I know America is a mess, and everything is going to hell, but I still have big plans — first of which is to read as little of the news as possible while still staying quasi-informed. This is my strategy because much of what is happening in America falls squarely into the category of there-is-nothing-I-can-do-about-that. I can create art. I can protest. I can speak out loud. I am, indeed, a revolutionary. But part of my revolutionary nature stems from knowing when to turn the news off. My inner peace is too important for me to dedicate more than an hour of each day to the antics of the orange man. So I won’t do it. Instead, I have other things to focus on — both in my contribution to the resistance and in my personal life. I have plans to build a tiny home, found an art nonprofit, steward a lavender field, create art, and travel.

One of these years, I still plan to build an off-grid, tiny house for myself. Somewhere. Hopefully, next to my lavender. This is a plan I have had for years and years. I don’t necessarily feel closer to achieving this goal, but I also know the wheel turns in mysterious ways. I want to live comfortably, off-grid. And I do know it is possible both to have comfort and to live off-grid, simultaneously. I also know it is possible to live off-grid in discomfort. I’ve tried both ways and many ways in between. Perhaps, 2025 is the year my tiny home goals begin to come to fruition.

Another goal I have in next several years is to create an art nonprofit. This is how I want to contribute my time and energy to the resistance and to help people heal from trauma. I believe that art is resistance, art is meditation, and art is medicine. I have a strong desire to promote art among marginalized populations, both at home and abroad — the LGBTQI+, people living with HIV, children living in orphanages, unhoused people, and people recovering from addiction. The reason I want to promote art among these populations is simple: Art heals. Sometimes, we can express feelings and emotions through art that we cannot express in other ways, and that expression helps us heal from trauma. Stay tuned for more about the art nonprofit. Perhaps, you would like to be involved in some capacity? If so, reach out!

The stewardship of the lavender field at Spiral Mountain is another goal at the forefront of my life, and I am so proud of the lavender there. This will be the third year for most of the lavender there, and it is almost mature. This is very exciting! I remember when the lavender at Old Field Lavender Farm came into maturity. It was absolutely magical, and I met many of my closest friends in the lavender field that year — summer solstice 2020. Now, five years later, the same lavender is becoming mature in a different spot. It’s difficult to believe, but this year will be my seventh full year of farming lavender. I planted the first plants at Old Field Lavender Farm in the autumn of 2018. I’ll keep doing it, I suppose, because I love lavender — but certainly not because lavender is making me monetarily wealthy; trust me, it isn’t. I do have a passion for lavender, though. There’s something about the fragrance of a freshly cut bundle of lavender that is incomparable to any other experience on Earth, in my humble opinion. I encourage all of you to try it, at least once in your life. Come visit us at Spiral Mountain Farm to try it, if you’d like.

Travel! This is definitely high on my list of priorities and always has been. I usually don’t know how I am going to make the money part work, but I always figure out a way, somehow. In the last several years, I’ve been watercolor painting my way through travel experiences, which has been lots of fun. Last winter, I went to the Bay Islands of Honduras — Utila and Roatan — and I painted watercolor art there to help fund my trip, which worked! This year, I’m going back to St. Thomas, and I plan to create art while I’m there to help fund my trip. St. Thomas is much more expensive than Honduras, though, so I do have some feelings about it. However, if I waited until I had enough money, I would never go anywhere. I’d rather fly by the seat of my pants than stay at home every winter. The Blue Ridge Mountains in the wintertime in a tiny, teardrop camper is not the sort of life I want to live, and the world is vast and brimming with opportunity! So here we go — wheeee! I’ll turn 44 while I’m in St. Thomas, which is wonderful fun. I’ve never had a birthday on the island before.

I leave Gulfport, FL, tomorrow to make my way back to North Carolina, and I’ll be in St. Thomas from February 9th until March 10th. I do plan to submit articles to Substack in St. Thomas, and I am taking a laptop with me. However, knowing how things should go on the island, I don’t plan to spend a lot of time on my devices. I plan to spend as much time as possible swimming and snorkeling in the beautiful Carribean Sea.

Anyhoo, these are my goals and aspirations for 2025 and the next several years. Thanks for reading, friends. I love y’all, and y’all means ALL.