Another Trip Around the Sun

What This Year Taught Me About Work I Actually Want

I try to spend my birthday doing two things: something fun, and something honest.

Some years that looks like pancakes and a morning at a museum (AVAM is my fave). Other years it’s a copy movie on the couch, a heating pad, and the kind of existential reflection you can only do when the calendar and your body both insist you slow down. This year, it’s a little of both.

Because honestly? This year felt like three years stacked on top of each other.

It’s been a year of change, of endings I wasn’t prepared for, of beginnings I didn’t think I was ready for, and of noticing — sometimes reluctantly — what wasn’t working anymore. A year where I had to look at habits I’d been carrying since my “high-functioning, anxious overachiever” days and decide if they still deserved to come with me. (Spoiler: most of them do not. The break up is a work in progress.)

The weird thing about getting older is you start to realize that the big shifts in your life don’t actually arrive with dramatic music and a spotlight. They happen quietly, in the in-between moments: the Tuesday morning you admit you are the reason you always feel overworked, the Thursday night when you can’t ignore the ache in your hip anymore, the Sunday when you realize you’ve been chasing someone else’s definition of success for longer than you meant to.

This year, I gave myself permission to name those moments.

I left old versions of myself and my work behind. I built new ones. I stopped trying to be a “high-capacity machine” and started to focus on being a person again — a person with chronic pain, with limits, with joy, with community, with a cat who believes in interrupting Zoom calls at the worst possible time. I got clearer about what aligned work feels like, not just what I’m capable of pushing through.

And because the universe has a sense of humor, clarity always arrives right when everything else falls apart. I think that’s the deal: you lose something, and in that empty space, you finally see the shape of what you actually want.

As I step into this next year of my life, I’m keeping a very short list of priorities:

More honesty with myself.
More work that aligns with my capacity.
More boundaries that protect my peace.
More community.
More gentleness.
More meaning.
Less pretending anything is fine when it’s… not.

This is the energy I’m bringing into the next season of Boss Insights and Bosscraft — a commitment to building work that supports a life, not consumes one; a belief that we don’t have to choose between impactful work and rest; and a hunch that the more we tell the truth about what is really important in life, the easier it becomes to craft something sustainable.

If you’re here reading this — thank you. Truly. It is only my family and my community that has carried me through this year that stretched me in ways I didn’t expect. I’m grateful for every conversation, every DM, every workshop, every Bosscraft member, every moment you let me sit with you in the messy middle of your own story.

Here’s to another year.
May it be softer.
May it be more honest.
May it be aligned in ways we can feel in our bones.

And may it give us all just enough ease to exhale.

XO,

Whitney