My lifelong goal is full self-expression
And what this means for me/us in 2025 🥳
Welcome to The Lighthouse! A newsletter written by a Canadian author (Cait Flanders, that’s me!) who found herself living in the middle of nowhere in the UK. It’s deeply reflective and also intentionally lighthearted. There’s enough darkness online and in real life. Let’s hangout in the light. 🕯
Hi friend,
And happy new year! It feels so good to be back at my desk. And by desk, I mean my dining room table. Considering that I’ve been a self-employed writer for nearly a decade now, you might imagine I have a nice desk setup. The reality is that I live alone, and also dine alone most days, and so the one table I own serves many purposes in The Lighthouse. I write here (and sometimes from the couch). I eat here (and sometimes from the couch too). I also do puzzles and paint here (never from the couch). And sometimes I just sit here and stare out the window and make up stories about what the birds and hedgehogs are doing. So far today, I’ve done a little bit of it all (except for paint).
I took a full two weeks off, over the holidays. I was away from The Lighthouse for two weeks, as well. About 8 days into my stay at Tall Man’s house (my partner, for new readers—hi!), that magical thing happened, which often does whenever I’m in a new environment and create space in my life: inspiration came flooding in.
The start of each new year is always a surprise for me, in terms of how I’ll feel. Sometimes, I’m exhausted to the point where I can’t even look at content that talks about people’s goals for the year ahead. And sometimes, I’m the person who is excited to write that piece of content. This year, it seems to be the latter… and I’m rolling with it, friend! In fact, if there was one main theme most of my goals would fit under the umbrella of, it’s that I don’t want to get in the way of my own creativity this year. I want to follow my curiosity, let inspiration take me down many paths, and bring more parts of myself to my work—and my life.
I have so many ideas right now. Ideas for what I’d like to write about here, and include in my next book, and ways we might connect this year. Ideas for a couple experiments I’m going to do, and a short list of things I’d like to do with my money too. Ideas for things I’d like to try in my relationships (including with myself). And it all feels creative, friend. Even the money stuff. It’s all creative, and feels new and exciting. Inspiration is exciting! I also feel grateful I can say inspiration is something I can access often. I actually feel as though I’ve had a lot of ideas for things I might try and do and write, these last few years. But what’s also been true is that as quickly as ideas come in, I usually talk myself out of them—and that’s what I want to stop doing in 2025.
My lifelong goal is to feel fully expressed.
I don’t know exactly when I came up with this goal, but it was sometime during the first two years of the pandemic, when I also happened to be doing therapy to work through a traumatic experience I had in 2019. The thing about going to therapy for a while is that your patterns of thinking and behaving start to make regular appearances… and if you’re willing to look at them, you just might be able to identify which ones aren’t working for you. With the help of my therapist, it became obvious one of my patterns is to hide. To stay small and quiet. To not say too much or be too much, or do anything that could cause someone to leave me. I know many people can relate. It was a survival strategy, but it also resulted in me being in many unhealthy relationship dynamics. And, staying small and quiet resulted in a lot of self-sabotaging, and left me feeling unseen and misunderstood and hurt—often. I just didn’t tell anyone (because: hiding).