Following a practice I’ve been doing for the past 16 years (see list), my first post of 2025 across all my sites is of three words that are my aspirations or “themes” for the year ahead. They are not “resolutions” so much as guiding thoughts or principles.
This year they are: Resilience, Hope, and Health.
Resilience
Over the past year or so, and particularly over the past six months, it’s become increasingly clear to me that right now a focus for me needs to be around the general area of “resilience” on a number of different levels.
We’re in a time when extreme weather events ARE increasing – people are dying or being displaced by the thousands or millions. We’re in a time when extreme politics are increasing. We have a changing administration in the US, of course, but we’re seeing extreme governments come to power all around the world. Pick a continent… and there are changes happening there. New viruses are floating around (and the US looks to be poised to dramatically decrease our ability to respond).
There’s a lot of change going on – and a lot of uncertainty.
Of course, given my work, I’m interested in Internet resilience, something the Internet Society, my employer, is very focused on. But I’ve come to understand that Internet resilience depends upon electrical resilience, something I’ve written about at length. There’s also a need for resilience in our access to content, in our transportation, in our housing… and so much more.
And it’s not just at a personal level – we need community resilience. We need to strengthen our local connections, know more about our neighbors, build mutual aid networks, and generally help figure out how we can all get through all this.
I’m taking some actions in my own life, which I’ll write about on my sites. I’m planning to write a series of issues of my own “A View from the Crow’s Nest” newsletter on the theme of “building resilience” – you are welcome to subscribe! You can also expect this theme to come up in my writing and speaking for the Internet Society… and perhaps some other venues as well.
Hope
I do think that we’re in for some tough times in the months and years ahead. The politics can look bleak for many people… but even putting politics aside, the extreme weather events are effecting more of us. Reports on the state of the climate are dire.
It’s easy to “doomscroll” and get lost in despair.
As I wrote about last January 1, we can’t do that. As bleak or chaotic as things may be, I think we must choose hope “as a daily, gritty act of resistance and resilience”.
There are people working on ideas and solutions for many challenges we have. There are people working to blunt the impact of extreme policies. We need to celebrate and support this work – and do more ourselves.
That is MY goal for this year – to keep highlighting these hopeful stories, and to create some of my own as well.
Health
This is my perennial theme, but as I noted last year, I’ve had to make some changes in my life – and I need to continue those changes. The good news is that I’m making some positive gains: I’ve lost 23 pounds since last January 1, and my blood pressure is down closer to a normal level. Largely this is due to increasing daily exercise (walking 2-4 miles), lowering my sodium intake, and trying to make better food choices. I’ve still got some work to do… and I NEED to do it.
These are my themes for 2025.. let’s see how the year goes!
