Out with the Old, In with the New

A Missive from the Field, Bonus Edition

I’ve been nesting. 🌿

That’s the only description I have for what has occurred these last two weeks as we crossed the threshold into the New Year. In much the same fashion as when I was preparing to give birth to each of my children, I was possessed with an intense desire to clean house.

And not just clean, but purge.

Nothing was safe, digitally or physically. I deactivated my Facebook account. I deleted over 200 Instagram posts. Erased 20+ reels and videos, including several from my YouTube channel. Axed all but 15 of my best posts on here. I retooled my URLs (the root domain now points to my portfolio, and this newsletter now resides at the ‘newsletter’ subdomain). I vacuumed and scrubbed and washed about everything in my home that wasn’t nailed down (and even several things that were). Compiled more things to be donated. Organized my desk (!). Anything that felt marked by the Holy Spirit for removal, anything that didn’t serve the forward path, got pruned heavily.

I even pulled everything out of the refridgerator and scrubbed all the shelves in the sink!

Dramatic winter skies. If it wasn't so chilly, I could watch them scud across the sky for hours!

It started just prior to my scheduled winter break, beginning with a vague sense of digital overwhelm and desire to reclaim a simpler analog time, and escalating into a phenomenon eerily similar to the frenzied preparation for a birth or a move, though neither is on my radar in any capacity. (What does my Father in Heaven have planned for me??)

With each removal or reworking of the old, it has brought a fine moment of reflection. We can’t know where we are going if we don’t know where we’ve been, as they say, and in much the same fashion as getting lost in an old box of photos, I reminisced a bit while I was cleaning up on here.

My most popular post for 2025 was my early (early) Spring trip to Palouse Falls:

I say this every year, that I need to get out on the road more, and every year (thus far) it seems that things have gotten in the way of doing anything more than day trips. (You wouldn’t think a day trip would take more planning than a week-long escapade, but with younguns, they do!) I still hope to get out more this year, plus, 2025 saw the replenishing of all my camping gear, so now we have some serious incentive to disappear into the wild.

My least popular post for 2025 (but really should have been my most popular) was a short lesson on how to make your own sketchbooks for journaling:

It’s ‘least popularity’ status likely has to do with the fact it was behind a paywall for much of the year, but I love this post so much for it’s usefulness that it will remain de-paywalled from here on out.

My favorite post from 2025, though, has to be my post on the Grail Diary (from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade) and my tale of how I got into sketchjournaling:

I cannot imagine going through life without my trusty journal. There is something uniquely special about recording memories and information in this manner, it has a great capacity to almost transport you through time itself to re-experience those moments with each reread. (I’m hoping to write more on the science behind this later this year.)

Enjoy the Journey… 🌿

Thank you so much for reading, and I look forward to more adventures this coming year.
❦ Heather

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**If you enjoyed this newsletter, please consider checking out some of my other work. 🌿