It’s about that time, friends.

One year is closing. Another is opening.

I promised I’d update you all on my gratitude journal practices for the year. I added some new columns. Implemented some new routines.

And I’m happy to let you know how 2025 went.

Join me and get started with your own gratitude journal.

We’re all just walking each other home.

As each year closes, I make some type of art project with my gratitude journal. I’ve referred to it before as a “reverse vision board.”

Typically, I use the most common or most exciting words from my journal, transforming the written text into some type of image with letters and sentences.

This year, I did something a little different. I gathered up a bunch of images and printed out physical photos. Analog is the new digital, afterall.

I started out by using this pattern, but I had ordered a whole ton of photos. I ended up adjusting the pattern to make it bigger:

These images embodied magical moments found in the text of my gratitude journal. They displayed people and places I was grateful towards. They represented joy and opportunities I don’t want to forget.

While in most years, the text evokes an image, this year the images evoked a words. As I stood back and took in the finished product, a phrase washed over me. The Ram Dass quote:

We’re all just walking each other home.

I am supremely grateful for the ways in which people have shown up for me in love and compassion. I feel at most peace in the moments where I do the same for others.

Moving into 2026, I think this quote may be my guiding force. I think it would be beautiful if we all acted in a way that ensured the safety, peace and protection of others as we walk through this thing called life together. In moments of overwhelm, I’ll do my best to pause and ensure this is the place I’m acting from. To allow gratitude to produce more of itself.

The Things I Wanted

One of the new-ish columns I promised to update you on was the ‘I want…’ column. The idea was to see if writing these things down produced results, either through reinforcement or magical manifestation.

Learn more about the structure of my gratitude journal.

Overall, I wrote down about 30 unique things I wanted through the year. Sometimes I phrased each ‘thing’ differently, but they all fit into 30 distinct categories. Obviously a lot of them were repeats.

Of these 30 things, here are the results at the end of 2025:

• Twelve of the things I wanted definitively came true.
• Eight of the things I wanted definitively did not.
• I have five things tallied as “not yet.” I’m staying optimistic that they’re in my future. The door isn’t closed. They just haven’t shown up yet at the time of writing.
• I had two opportunities for one of my ‘wants’ this year. Once I succeeded. Once I failed. So it’s a half-and-half outcome on that one.
• Four of the wants I wanted were impossible, and not in the ‘you should still swing for it‘ type of way. Things like perpetual health and happiness for the people I love. I can’t put them in the ‘yes’ or ‘no’ column, as these things ebb and flow as a part of the human condition. But I am extremely grateful for every time they swung into the ‘yes’ area — even if they can’t be perpetual.

So overall? I’d call this experiment a success. Miraculous outcomes on a lot of fronts. The want column stays.

It was interesting because some of these things I had completely forgotten writing down in this wish-like column. To see that they had been fulfilled was pretty amazing.

But for most of them, I was an active participant.

Lessons from wanting

There were two big lessons I took away from this exercise this year. One I have had experiential  knowledge of for a long time:

If you want something, you’ve got to show up and try.

Some of these things I wanted were very big, very difficult things. It would have been super easy to write them off as unachievable.

Yet when I showed up, opportunity opened. Not every time — there were still eight hard ‘no’s. We can’t always get what we want.

But there’s no way I would have gotten to 12 in the ‘yes’ column without acting on the dream. Sometimes they happened in ways I had foreseen. Other times, my actions led to windows opening in ways I couldn’t have imagined.

Manifestation may happen every once in a while happenstancely, but by-and-large getting the things I wanted required me to participate. To try. Even when the outcome wasn’t assured.

The other lesson is something that I wrote in a paid-subscriber newsletter back in the day. I may publish it here in the coming weeks. UPDATE: It has been published.

I’ve known it to be true for quite some time, but in 2025, it showed up in a magnitude I don’t know that I’ve experienced before.

It is this:

Trust that if you ask, people will show up.

I recently talked on the Vibe with Ky podcast about how in the past, I’ve been reluctant to ask for help. It’s something I’ve been working on. In 2025, I expressed my needs (and wants) to others in a way I don’t think I have in the past. I plowed through the shame and guilt — which we shouldn’t feel when voicing such things, but we often do.

Wouldn’t you know it?

People showed up in big ways.

Ways I couldn’t have imagined. Ways I’ll remember for the rest of my life.

So while a part of getting the things I wanted or needed in 2025 was showing up myself, it was also made possible by the strong village of people behind me. We are not alone in this world.

We are all just walking each other home.

The ‘No’ column

My ‘no’ column was sparse. I didn’t want to focus on the negative, so I didn’t write down three things a day.

I think this was the right move.

See how the ‘no’ section is structured here.

However, it wasn’t as successful as the other three columns in my gratitude journal.

A big part of that is that a lot of the things I want to say ‘no’ to are necessary parts of daily life.

Like dealing with telecom companies, for example.

Nightmare every time.

Get it out of my life.

Please.

But alas, in 2025, I still needed the internet to function. As much as I wish I could remove myself, it’s something I have to engage with.

Another part of it is that I need to work this muscle more. There were a few things I wanted to eject from my life that weren’t absolute necessities. I made some progress in this rite, but I could stand to make some more.

I don’t think the solution is to up it to three line items daily. But I do think I need to flip to the back of the book and remind myself why things are in this ‘no’ column more often.

Happy 2026

I don’t want to sugarcoat things. There were difficult moments this year. Seasons of profound loss. Transitions I went into kicking and screaming.

Life is never static. There is no mountain peak where everything is perfect.

But in this imperfect experience we call life, we do have the power to write (and rewrite) our own narratives. To use those narratives towards empowerment — financial or otherwise. Even if the world around us feels bleak at times.

Over the years, this has been a really helpful exercise to help me do just that. If you’d like to engage in it, too, here’s where you can get a copy of your own gratitude journal for the year ahead.

Wishing you and yours a beautiful, peaceful 2026. And if it is none of those things, I hope you at least get 12 of the 30 things you want amidst all the mess.