doing something new everyday of 2025

Doing something new every single day for a year? Yes, you have read that title of this post correctly. 

For this year of 2025 I have purposed to do something new every single day... a "first" if you want to term it for the year. 

You may be asking why would I want to do that, and today I wanted to share a bit more about why I am doing this... 

Several months ago I was wandering through a used bookstore when I came across a book entitled "I Dare Me". I admit that when I first read the cover title I didn't think much about it. I looked at it, skimmed the cover and admittedly put it back on the shelf. As I kept browsing throughout the bookstore I kept thinking back to that book and eventually wandered back to it. I looked at it again and picked it up and started reading it. The owner of the bookstore laughed and remarked that they too had looked at it more than once. I was intrigued but didn't really feel that I connected deeply with it, but thought it could be an interesting read. It went into my pile and I added it to my reading list. As the months have gone on and I have read the book I realized I resonated deeply with a couple of points that the author made and there were a couple of things that just made sense to me. 

1. Her experiences and background (although different) resonated with my own health journey and experiences. She expressed things that I had often thought deeply but never talked about except with those in my immediate circle.

"I had survived having my entire large intestine removed when I was thirty-three. I had survived breast cancer at thirty-five. I survived kidney cancer at age forty-five. I should have been dancing every day like Gene Kelly in Singing in the Rain just to be breathing, right? But, I wasn't. Perhaps it was because I had survived all of that I was even more distressed...I didn't have time to move to Italy to find myself or meditate on my navel in Bali..."

This paragraph (condensed) hit me so deeply... for the first time someone had expressed those intense emotions of feeling so grateful for a second chance at life and yet feeling distressed because I don't always feel like Gene Kelly everyday or don't feel like I am doing something "to change the world" each day. I expressed some of this in my post last January (click HERE) all about "after the long illness" but there was a lot behind the scenes that this year I took time to work through and pray through and so reading this just hit me deeply. 

2. Stepping into the pain of My Story

In her book Lu Ann spoke of her experience with connecting to her health story/journey. I resonated deeply with her story about connecting back to her health journey. She said...

"As of this writing, I'm a twenty-one year survivor. I tell women who have just been diagnosed with breast cancer, the first year is war. You go to battle for your life. There's surgery, chemo, hair loss, pain, scars. You see fellow survivors who don't make it. You lie awake at night scared.... If you get past the first year, you still think about it every day. Is it back?...You don't trust your body not to turn on you again. You pray your mammograms and X-rays are clean. You hold onto your family....If you're lucky, like me, time goes by. And one day, you actually forget to think about breast cancer. You almost feel guilty about it. You go back to life and work without breast cancer on your mind. Therapists says it's healthy to move on and so you do...I've told my story of being diagnosed with breast cancer many times over the years...but as time went on it sometimes felt like I was talking about someone else. I didn't want to emotionally connect to my thirty-five year-old self. It hurt too much..." //page 74

The pages surrounding Lu Ann's experience was something that brought me to tears. It was eye-opening and it was deeply healing. I realized that it was me. I have shared my story with people around the world, through the blog, and through my books... and somewhere it became almost clinical. Just like her I felt like I had told the story of a young woman (a girl in many ways) who at one point had only been given a few months to live and now was healed and I felt like I was talking about someone else. 

A few years ago some of you remember that I went back to teaching (a dream fulfilled) after nearly a decade away. One day a fellow teacher walked in and sat down and with no pretense said to me, "so tell me your story". I was confused and asked what she was talking about and she proceeded to tell me that the principal and students had been saying "how incredible" my story was and she wanted to hear it. I hesitated, she insisted, and I proceeded to tell her a 10 minute version of the story (because it was obvious she was bored)... at the end she literally looked at me, stood up, and said "hmmm....I was expecting something really remarkable ... what's so inspiring about your story?" and walked out. 

I remember sitting there stunned... and then realized that down deep there was a part of me that felt exactly what she said. What was so special and remarkable about my story? What was so inspiring about it? Some of my friends have hated the response she had... but to me she expressed something I encountered as I returned to "real life". Most people never were going to understand or take the time to really hear the war that had been fought for my health. Some maybe were afraid it could happen to them, some maybe just didn't care, or some (like a boss I had) told me that my experiences wouldn't contribute to the skills for the job...

I had to heal and it took me a while to work through time lost, dreams delayed, and hurt that was incredibly deep... and that took time... a lot of time.

So after I read the book in its entirety and realized also that there was a sense of replanting and growing after nearly a decade of fighting for my life and then the ensuing years of losing my precious daddy and grandmother and a hundred other big life changes along the way... and so a year of doing something new every single day was born. 

A couple of guidelines that I wanted to share... 

1. While I do plan to share a lot of the items throughout the year, there are a few that I have planned that are private which I know you will understand and respect. I may in the future share about them... or maybe they will stay in a secret place in my heart.

2. A first could be something that I hadn't done in the last ten years (after nearly a decade away from "real life"... let me tell you this makes sense). 

3. Every single day I will be doing a first... and welcome suggestions y'all! If you have anything please feel free to send it to me! 

4. Not every "first" is "life-shattering" but each one is something that I am looking forward to learning from and experiencing and sharing!

Friend, I am not sure where you are as you have approached this new year, but I hope that this year of me doing something new every day will inspire you in your own story. Here is to replanting, building, and rejoicing...

L'Chaim friends...here is to life.

"The people who survived the wars have found favor in the desert. The LORD appeared to me in a faraway place and said, “I love you with an everlasting love. So I will continue to show you my kindness. Once again I will build you up, and you will be rebuilt, my dear people Israel. Once again you will take your tambourines, and you will go dancing with happy people. Once again you will plant..." 

//Jeremiah 31:2-5//