This year has been the most revealing, raw, challenging, unstable, vulnerable, exciting, evocative, and honest year I’ve had in my life.
I’ve watched myself do things that I thought were impossible, overcome fears that once anchored me in comfort, question sides of myself that were written for me and by me, and learn how to move authentically in foreign spaces.
Water has been a constant theme throughout this year. Most of my life, I’ve lived in a desert, dried out by dusty landscapes. This year, I’ve surrounded myself with mountains of waves, plunging into the ocean to find a peace I’ve never been able to feel before.
Constantly traveling reveals deep insecurities around attachment: to places, to objects, to people. Attachment is grounding. It helps me feel stable. The longest I stayed anywhere this year was three months, and I still find myself yearning for the slightest bit of a firm base I can find: a meditation ritual, familiar foods, warm showers, sunsets, the clothes that I’ve been wearing for a year on repeat.
With people, it gets a little more taxing, as I long for and crave a consistent community among nomadic individuals. Meeting people while traveling is like pressure cooking a relationship — sometimes you end up badly singed or burnt entirely, other times you enjoy a delicious treat that you will probably never have again. When I feel lonely, I’m reminded that I will always have the moon, the stars, the trees, and the birds.
As I look through 2025 (and the 11,000 photos I took during it), gratitude wraps around my slow-beating heart, pulling a gentle smile onto my face. Throughout the year, I would shake my snow globe life and watch the shimmering pieces fall and settle, only to repeat the beautiful motion again and again. Each new flake formation does not go unnoticed, revealing new patterns and information about myself to absorb. For my next chapter, instead of leaving this process up to gravity, I’m magnetizing parts of my life to create a picture that balances fate and ever-changing desire.
Moovin & Groovin 