2025 in review: Defining Enough
2025 was a difficult year in many respects. Instead of dwelling on that, I thought I would review the year based on the theme I set at the start of the year - The Year of Enough.
This theme turned out to be quite useful as a guiding principle for the year. My wife and I moved from a three bed house to a two bed cottage, so we decluttered about a third of our stuff. We got rid of furniture, clothes and books, cutting things right down. I thought this process would be hard and emotional. Actually, it was easy once we got into the rythym of it, as I realised how much stuff we had accumulated over the years and how irrelevant a lot of it felt to our lives now. I found I didn't miss anything we got rid of. Once it was gone I simply forgot it existed.
One slightly more difficult category of things to discard was projects. Things I would get round to 'in time'. Art supplies I was definitely going to use when I suddenly found time and inclination to draw, models I was going to made. Discarding these felt difficult as I was giving up on potential hobbies, but also freeing. It clarified my main hobbies as writing silly little poems and messing around with this site. Everything else is secondary and unlikely to happen.
I also didn't buy new books for the year, which helped with enough. Instead I delved into the backlog I already had, finally reading Don Quixote. It made me realise I do not always need to be chasing the new and the exciting, but can instead focus on what is in front of me.
This desire to pare things back was reflected in the digital declutter I did in December. It helped align my use of technology with what I want to do. The days felt longer and I felt more connected to the present moment. I was able to hear my own thoughts instead of numbing them with others. Its a question of defining how much information I consume. With all the knowledge of the world at my fingertips, I often have a desire to force as much as possible into my head. But this is not useful to me, not in the long term. Its better to select a few things, think about them deeply instead of going wide. Again, the answer is to use it less but use it intentionally.
I haven't gone full minimalist with objects or information. Our house is still full of piles of books, music and games. But I do think this theme has been useful to identify what is essential and what I want to do. I've focused a lot more on my values and have built from there, instead of mindlessly consuming. I do think there's a power in reducing your consumption this way as it allows you to focus more in what is important. There's a lot of noise and defining enough for myself allows me to find the signal more easily.
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