Scribbling outside the lines - My 2025 Manifesto

Overcoming new year overwhelm, taking life advice from a rapper on the internet and a new attitude for 2025

Sometimes I can find January a little overwhelming…half of me is excited, and half of me is nervous about the high expectations that come with the new year. Expectations of course, that I mostly put on myself. And who could blame me, or anyone for that matter, the idealisms of self improvement and living your best life are ubiquitous with the start of every new year. Often it’s hard not to feel at least some sense of dread at not being able to live up to your own ideals (and mine are annoyingly high I might add.)

So what do I do to counteract these feelings of discomfort and trepidation about entering a new year of unknowns? I plan! I plan trips, adventures and dates with friends—I must make sure I have fun things to look forward to! So much so, that before I know it my calendar is fast filling up, and then I start to feel a sense of overwhelm of a whole other kind. Will I have enough time to achieve the things I want to achieve? Am I focusing too much on just…fun? (If you hadn’t already gathered at this point, overthinking is somewhat of a speciality of mine.)

Last year was a strange one for me, I spent the first half of it mostly in existential crisis, feeling completely lost and then the second half of it ‘living my best life’ and having so much fun—being in your 30s can be a confusing time, okay, but yay to therapy!

Whilst I had lots of fun last year and want much of that to continue, as I enter this new year, one thing I know is that I want to take myself more seriously—but not in the way you might think. Let me explain: I currently take my work (i.e., the things I create and put out into the world) far too seriously, but I don’t take myself or my discipline toward that work seriously enough. This creates a kind of dissonance. In reality, I think I could benefit from flipping things—having a little more fun with what I do and being a bit more serious in my endeavours and projects I want to work on.

I know in the past couple of years, without sounding too theatrical, the artist inside of me has felt a bit repressed, a little neglected if you will. Yes I’ve been creating but it’s as though I’ve mostly been colouring within the lines and I think I’m ready to be a bit messy and scribble. If you want to be all Julia Cameron about it (highly recommend her book The Artist’s Way, by the way) my inner child has wanted to come out and play and I’ve not been fully letting her, in turn blocking her from her full potential.

Yesterday, I saw a clip on TikTok of the rapper Doechii from 2019, before her more recent successes. In it, she challenged herself to be shameless (it actually reminded me of the OG YouTuber Shameless Maya, who did something very similar back in the day). In the clip, Doechii spoke about letting go of shame and judgment, living to her fullest potential unapologetically, and asked the question “What would happen if I just didn’t give a f**k about anything?” As someone who tends to overanalyse much of what I do, it really made me wonder…

So, in the words of Doechii “f**k that s**t”. Here I am letting my inner child play, scribbling outside of my own lines, and sharing some thoughts unapologetically…and I guess, starting a Substack. Who knows what the rest of the subject matter will be, ‘musings of a 30 something’, I guess? So subscribe if you enjoyed my ramblings and maybe I’ll write some more.

Bye for now,

Samio x