Hello, Substack

New year, new platform.

This fall, a vicious bot ate my website, which necessitated a change in hosting. That, in turn, led to a mass consolidation of all my domains into one simple site at harmonyharkema.com (which is now in desperate need of a design facelift because I don’t really want to see my face that big on any screen—but I’ll get around to it). It’s nice to have the library and my podcast and my sewing classes all in one place, for sure, but it left me itching for a clean slate to write on.

So here I am. Hello, Substack. Everyone says you’re great, and while I don’t care about paid subscribers or even garnering readers, I like your clean look, not to mention the simplicity and separateness of a spot that’s just for my words.

It’s January 2, which means everyone and their brother Darryl are posting about resolutions and words of the year and how many books they read in 2024. I don’t have a lot to say about that right now. It’s been a long year, and I tested positive for Covid this week (a belated Christmas gift), so while I’ve just been fighting a headache and a general sense of tiredness, I haven’t had much of a chance yet to start thinking about what I want in 2025.

I mean, I’ll turn 50 this year. Gulp. Thinking about resolutions feels like a lot of pressure with that on the horizon. (What did I do with that bucket list I made at 35, anyway? Who knows. At least I’ve been to Europe. And Kenya. Not much can compete with the Sistine Chapel and seeing lions in the wild.)

I don’t look almost 50, for which I’m grateful. I think my kids are keeping me young. They don’t cheat me out of (much) sleep these days, and they certainly keep things busy. But I also seem to have escaped turning gray (my mom, who is 72, still isn’t gray, so I guess I inherited that gene—I’ll just go snow-white all of a sudden someday), and I started wearing a hat when I was still in my twenties, so the wrinkles are few. Good skin care, friends. It matters.

My wants are few and fairly simple. I’d like a significantly less hectic schedule, but I’m probably mired in the current chaos until June. So scratch that until summer. My hope is to make a few changes with the start of the 2025-26 school year. 2023 was a year of Big Change professionally, so I took a break in 2024 from planning and trying to achieve things, allowing myself to just be off the hook. I didn’t even plan my reading. But while it was good to allow myself to just tread water for a lot of the year, simply getting through all the things (read: too many commitments), there are things I really missed. Like having a reading plan and time for fiber arts. Regular personal retreats are a practice I’d like to get back to. And scheduled time to write.

This is how it goes, isn’t it? Some years are Big Goal years. Others are tread water years. Some are sign-me-up years. Others are cut back years. Always, always, my main goal is contentment. And when that barometer is way off, I know there are changes to be made.

In 2025, I’d like to get better at the weekly juggling act, especially dinner prep. This school year, we have dance three nights a week, and dinner has been a real hurdle. I also spent a lot of time this fall looking at full laundry baskets and sighing in defeat. And I felt so . . . unaccomplished. So as 2025 dawns, I’m thinking I want a short list of meaningful goals. Some changes. A bit of cutting back. A year of adding only what matters most to me. For one thing, I have a middle-grade novel to finish.

Laura Tremaine, whose books I copyedited, has a set of 10 Questions for the End of the Year that are worth pondering. And Kendra Adachi, aka The Lazy Genius, has 30 Questions for the Start of a New Year. There’s a little bit of overlap between these two lists, but they’ve both been helpful to me in the past. I’ll probably take some time with them before next Monday, which is when I go back to work.

I’ve rambled a lot in this first fresh post, but it’s helped me begin to wrap my mind around what I’m really longing for. It’s also energized me, which is what a good brain dump is for. Time for some reflective journaling and goal-setting.

I hope you can find a similar space of self-knowledge to sink into.

Happy 2025.