For the first time in some years, I felt compelled to write a full-on blog summary of my year. Put simply (and obviously notwithstanding the ongoing and mounting horrors), this has been my best year in quite awhile. Put another way, in 2019 I experienced a devastating personal loss, and have not had anything I could really call a ‘good year’ since then. Which is not to say that I haven’t accomplished things, or had rewarding experiences; in 2022 I wrote the lyric, “the past few years have been the hardest of my life; I’m the best I’ve ever been”, as a celebration of my dedication to growing, making meaning and cherishing the entirety of my life, not just the summery times.
None of this is to say that this year has been easy; at the beginning of it I was in a pretty rough place, depressed and burned out, such that I took intermittent leave from work for the first several months. I think that the shifts that have occurred have been due in equal measure to my own efforts, external supports, and serendipity. I’m striving every day to be humble and grateful for all three, but placing the most focus on the first, since it’s what I can control. I’d like to do some accounting of that here.
Let’s start with my projects and practices daily tracking chart, pictured here:
I got the idea for this after seeing parkourist Lisa Eckert post her previous year’s chart early in the year, and decided on impulse to mock one up and begin tracking, filling in the few days that had already passed. I started with five categories (parkour, climbing, music, film, Arabic) and ended up adding six more (rest, running, writing, art, house, cycling) as the year went on. My notions about what constituted an instance of each category also got more defined as I went, with a general ethic of ‘give yourself credit, but claim no easy victories’. That is, I wanted to notice and appreciate the accrual of intentional practice over time, but also be honest with myself about the ‘intentional’ part (e.g. diddling around on my piano for a few minutes before bed isn’t bad, but it’s not the same as practicing with purpose).
Here, then, are how I ended up defining the categories:
Parkour: a proper session, not just futzing out in the wild. Usually at least an hour, and recording something to reflect on.
Climbing/gym: this bucket was just climbing at the beginning of the year, but in March I shifted to more just upper body strength training, mostly in the gym but also with bodyweight or whatever when I was traveling. It still feels like it all belongs in the same bucket though, since it’s all focused on upper body, mostly to the end of strength and conditioning (as opposed to aesthetics, as with parkour).
Music: defined as practicing at least two of my songs; writing something; recording something; or learning a cover song.
Film: half an hour or more of deliberate work on any aspect of the film (writing, rehearsing, production meeting, etc.)
Arabic: focused practice involving writing, speaking and recording.
Rest: eight or more hours in bed, falling asleep relatively quickly and no notable wakeful periods.
Running: any running session, always a mile or more.
Writing: any creative writing, generally at least a half hour.
Art: any drawing or painting, generally at least a half hour.
House(hold): repair, improvement, or any non-routine household logistical figuring that would lead to an improved or more organized home or state of affairs.
A thing to know about these categories is that they don’t capture a lot of aspects of life that I do consider quite important and valuable: parenting, routine household operations, my paid therapy work, or interpersonal relationships. I specifically wanted to capture projects and practices. Things I had to make a point to work on and keep moving forward–either toward a big goal like a film shoot, or towards trying to make or maintain routine–but that I knew would feel specifically rewarding and resourcing to me. As in, these are the things that can get blown off by orienting too much towards others. Sometimes work in these areas would also benefit others, as with the household category, but each category had to have a certain ‘for me’-ness for the chart to feel meaningful.
I feel like there’s a ton of analyzing that I could do of this data if I had the time, but not to get bogged down, here’s the quick and dirty spreadsheet I threw together:
I could also use these numbers as a jumping off point for goal setting (what if I aimed for doing something toward my goals 90% of the days of the year? What if I aimed to get good rest 40% of nights?); but on the other hand, you know what, y’all? Looking at this, I actually feel really fucking accomplished and proud. I think it would be a mistake to immediately try to level up without just noticing and appreciating what I did, and that this tracker helped me do it. So if you’re wondering, I really can’t recommend doing something like this enough. What it helped me do more than anything was to notice. If it had been awhile since I’d touched any of these, to get to choose to return, or to adjust my goal or intention. If I had been fairly consistent, to appreciate and savor that. I think it helped me feel more satisfied with what I had and less prone to resentment when it was time to pivot to other things. And if a day had afforded me no hours to focus on my stuff, I could at a minimum always try to get some decent rest, and really regard that as a gift to myself.
Okay. To contain the Nate Silver-ization of my creative and spiritual life, let’s get into some qualitative reflections. Fair warning, I’m writing this mostly for myself, so feel free to get off the ride if you’re not trying to dive deep into my process. Some of these things I also wrote about earlier in the year in IG captions as the things happened.
The crown jewel here is, of course, the film shoot. In case you missed it due to its relatively smaller social media footprint: at the beginning of December we had a three day shoot for a short proof-of-concept version of my screenplay I Came Back To Life. I’ve been working on this script and story since 2021, and have remarked many times since that I had no idea what I was getting myself into. Even at a ‘microbudget’ scale, filmmaking takes a pretty dizzying amount of resources of time, money and dedication on the part of many people. And then the more micro the budget relative to the scale of the vision, the more the time and dedication ratios go up. I know people who have been in the film space for awhile know all this; but shit, I really got learned up by it. And I’m so damn grateful for it, truly. I couldn’t believe how fun it was to be on set, or how much the early footage has blown my expectations out of the water. I could go on and on about this, my biggest project, but to keep the focus more on my process, I think this was the year I actually became a Real Boy, by which I mean a filmmaker. I love becoming new things. I hope I never stop.
My music is a big part of the film, so focusing on that project doesn’t feel like a departure from my first love. But all the same, I’ve had to do plenty of juggling and reordering of priorities ongoingly this year. Early in the year I bit off a ton with all my projects, such that at a few points in the year I had to remark, ‘you know, my life is really, really good, filled with good things that I wanted and asked for–and, wow, I’m pretty stressed out, and am looking forward to my next break’. I’m proud of the way I was able to dance with this pressure and set some things down with care and appreciation. With music, this looked like a pretty hectic gearing up for a full band recording session back in May for a new record. We tracked three songs, one of which has already been released on the Trans Of Noise comp to benefit the PCRF. The others are gonna wait until there’s enough spaciousness for me to turn my attention back to recording. It’ll happen.
I had a lot of peace around this setting down; but for the last few months of the year, I started to feel this itch to write a song before the year ended. I knew that music and songwriting in particular are old, dear friends and our relationship is still strong even if we don’t connect for awhile; but I also just knew it’d feel good. So a few days ago, after contemplating it for a couple months, I sat down and finished writing “Poison”. I’d already had most of the elements sitting around for a year or two. The baby was full-term and ready to come out, but I needed to push. I did, and then as predicted, I fell in love. It feels good to relate to songwriting this way, regarding each new one as the gift it is.
Then in total left field musical news, I’ve also composed as many as three piano pieces this year! I say ‘as many as’ because one is just a little 16 bar progression that loops, and the second is kind of a jazz head from two tone rows, with a reharmonized contrapuntal coda using the same two rows. That is, the first two are kind of on the edge as far as being fully-formed compositions, especially as I’m not a good enough player to deliver on the potential as an improvisational vehicle. But the last I would daresay is a bona fide piece. I don’t have the sheet music or a polished enough demo of most of these yet to show y’all, but soon I hope. Principally what I’d like to note for now is that it’s sweet to come back to this register of creativity in a low stakes playful way, which is an advantage of having your childhood piano in your detached garage apartment where you can play at any hour of the night.
Moving on: moving my body. I did it some this year. The most legible achievement was probably my half marathon, which again I venture might be my last. I think the main things I’m inclined to celebrate about it were that 1) I trained wisely for it, calibrating ongoingly to how my body was taking the stress of it, and did not injure myself! 2) I had been fantasizing about running this route as a half marathon for probably ten years. It’s satisfying to prove to myself that sometimes harebrained ideas of mine that lay dormant for hecka long can still eventually germinate and sprout.
I also embarked on a mission starting in March to regain my pullup, something I could do as a younger adult. That was before eight years on hormone replacement therapy and getting a lot heavier (NB: I am good with my weight and don’t want to lose it, but it is just objectively more to lift). I’m still probably months away from my goal if I hit it hard, but I have gone up by 40, 40 and 80 pounds on my pullups, lat pushdowns and dips, respectively, over the past nine months, and am objectively pulling more weight than I did when I was younger. She’s strong, folks!
I haven’t trained parkour nearly as much as I would have liked, and it’s less satisfying to do when one isn’t as regular and thus maximally fluid and mentally strong. One thing I am grateful for is to notice how much I miss and still love it as, to my tastes and body, the ideal marriage of physical training and art form. However I might shift focus in a particular season, I hope and believe I’ll keep coming back to parkour for many years.
Another one that I had to make the choice to set down was Arabic practice. This was the third time I’ve tried to study this ancestral language, and had to step back after a time and reevaluate. Folks, it’s just both very hard and incredibly fraught for me. This year, I tried self-study (after a previous community college course and a private tutor). In some ways I felt diminished anxiety and greater agency in directing my own learning without outside attention, but it was also a recipe for a fairly sprawling, inefficient process (if I wanted it to be meaningful and not completely rote). I do think I’ll come back again when the time is right, and probably front load with some purposeful curriculum creation, and a plan for how to bring it back to connecting with other people, which arguably is the point of language. But also, where cultural inheritances are concerned, it’s so easy to end up trying to adopt others’ meanings and lose one’s own. So again, I am grateful to have gotten greater clarity through my practice of what this learning means to me.
Speaking of connecting with other people: this was the year I came back to intimate relationships. Hard to know how much to share here in this public space, with respect to my own vulnerability and others’ privacy, and the fact that it’s all still in process. But suffice it to say, since my world historic heartbreak in 2019, I had yet to really get back on the horse of being able to reapproach new connection in a way that felt steady and safe, despite really missing it. And since at least late 2022 I had been in an extremely dormant place of surrender, trusting that the universe would bring it back around for me if or when it was time. That’s about all I’ll say here and now, but someday you’ll probably hear a song or two that lays it more bare. I won’t shout out the honeys here but they know who they are, and that they’re appreciated.
Maybe you’re thinking, ‘Amina, Jesus Christ, how do you have time to date with all the shit you’ve been doing’. Well yeah! It’s been a lot of balancing, managing mine and others’ expectations. But a big thing that I learned is that if one has taken time away from being out there and cultivated a lot of other projects and practices that feel meaningful, to deprioritize or drop those things the second a new cutie shows up in one’s world is really to dishonor and devalue oneself. At some point I realized that any new connection would need to start ‘in a small pot’, so to speak; what space it might grow to fill in the larger garden of my life was TBD, but wouldn’t happen quickly in any case.
Meanwhile, not only did I have a lot of other fish to fry, but I also seem to keep getting older and needing more rest! This was the first amended category to my chart. The real impetus was how bad my migraines had gotten in 2024, with inadequate sleep really being the prime suspect. As it turns out, I think the picture is a bit more complex than that, but committing to getting more sleep to try to get relief there has also helped me to reconnect with my body, how it actually appreciates being adequately resourced (who knew). There’s literally no goal that didn’t benefit from having enough in the tank to have greater mental and emotional clarity, less aches and fatigue. And I’m pleased to report that I only had thirteen migraines this year, down from seventeen last year! Onwards and upwards.
We’re getting there folks! Just a couple categories left to reflect on.
The ‘household’ category morphed somewhat over the course of the year, from being primarily to do with physical projects on my home, to having also/mostly to do with conversations about money, and how to manage it responsibly and in line with my values. This one still feels pretty private, but it is a process I want to name publicly, and also invite people I’m in direct relationship and community with into conversation around it.
With regard to art and writing: neither of these did I have any specific goals around, but I did want to appreciate when they called me and I answered. In particular, it felt sweet to return to poetry after about twenty years; another of those registers of creativity that I had eschewed out of respect for the craft, but maybe gone too far into denying myself permission just to explore that way of expressing, seeing, being.
Lastly, I want to record here some intentions that I wrote out for a ritual (we were specifically prompted for thirteen, which took some digging). In the order and parlance that they came to me:
- I will keep the faith for my longer term projects.
- I will keep playing creatively for its own sake.
- I will keep giving my body rest and movement as it asks, and before.
- I will have grace and gentleness for my body when it hurts.
- I will keep returning to hard, uncomfortable work that’s aligned with my values.
- I will stay present and intentional with my parenting.
- I will stay present in my relationships, orienting to my desire.
- I will stay oriented to my practices.
- I will keep working to accept the finitude of life.
- I will strive not to resent the so-called drudgery of the everyday.
- I will try to shift my ambitions and capacities into greater alignment.
- I will keep trying to do normal things with greater quality.
- I will bring myself fully to the present moment.
As I write these out, I’m reminded of my friend Bianca Beyrouti, who passed on the second day of this year, one day after publishing this intention-setting post on her own blog. The thing is, as painful as it is to mourn someone with such hope and intention (and vision, and integrity, and light,…), doesn’t mean there was anything wrong-headed about the orientation. It really is a riddle with no answer, knowing that we might have forty more years, or none, and trying to come up with a satisfactory strategy for both scenarios. In light of this, are any of us ever ready for death, or for life? What does it even mean to be ready?
Obviously these questions spill out of the scope of this seat of the pants year end reflection. But I think what I’ll take some gratification from, and keep as my pole star, is that I’ve been learning a lot about what it means to live well with both outcomes hanging in the air, equally possible as far as any one of us knows. And I want to have gratitude that this learning happened through 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024. Please know that I’m only talking about my own life and trials here, but: none of those years were good per se, but maybe they weren’t bad either. They were hard, they contained plenty that I didn’t choose or want or have control over. But I couldn’t have learned the things that made 2025 great (for me, in particular ways) without walking through the fire of the previous half decade.
Here’s to a 2026 where we all live as well as possible.
Amina Shareef Ali 