Sunset on 2024, sunrise on 2025
and introducing: Assemblage
Happy new year! It’s hard to believe that 2025 is upon us. I hope you welcomed it with calm, ease and joy.
Leading up to that midnight countdown and today as well, many of us look back. We reflect on intentions set, resolutions made, the journey of the last 365 days, the lessons learned along the way, the mistakes, the achievements big and small. Maybe we share our Spotify Wrapped or think about the best books we read, the places we went, the milestones we marked. We feel the loss of those who aren’t ending the year with us and thankful for those who are.
That’s me anyway.
I’ve always experienced the close of one year and the advent of another as a powerful and almost otherworldly moment. While the Gregorian calendar is just one of many, I take full and gratuitous opportunity to look back and of course ahead.
So as you might guess, that’s the order of the day here.
You might recall that I like to choose a word of the year. It’s meant to serve as a loose framework for the direction that I want to go, and for 2024 it was Evolution. Meaning growth, progress, busting down some proverbial doors and maybe even charting a new horizon.
And guess what?
2024 was full of evolution for me. In spades. In fact, it was downright transformational.
Maybe it had something to do with the fact that I took two weeks off right at the onset of the year and spent that time at home. I cleaned my fridge, did yoga, organized cabinets and visited museums. It was a “soft entry” to the year that I hadn’t previously experienced, and among other things it gave me a chance to start 2024 with a lot of stillness and intentionality. That included compiling this list of things that I wanted more and less of in 2024.
The list was more of a compass than a map, as you can imagine. I certainly didn’t floss enough or eat that much kale salad, in the grand scheme of things. Patience wore thin on plenty of occasions. My screen time was still higher than I’d have liked, I have yet to quit Amazon and I questioned myself plenty.
And yet. What a year it’s been.
Among other things, 2024 felt hugely significant to me in my journey as a writer. I restarted the practice of The Artist’s Way briefly. And ended up setting it aside – yet again. But for a good stretch of time, I did write daily morning pages. If you’re unfamiliar, this refers to three pages of freehand journaling that you do each morning as soon as you wake up. They say that it can be a powerful practice for many reasons.
For me, it unleashed some new directions and interests in terms of my writing. Beyond the monthly bulletins and poetry, I discovered a new love for the genre of personal essay. I’m still exploring and learning where this journey will take me, but in 2024 I wrote about our morning routine and the solar eclipse. I also penned a love note, reflected on what it means to read and wrote about my brother Pradheep, on what would have been his 38th birthday. Of course I also wrote about waking up in America on November 6 and turning inwards and filling my cup, which apparently many of us have adopted as a survival strategy in the current dystopian political landscape, in the U.S. and beyond.
Every word written and shared has been a pure labor of love, and the more I look inside, the more I realize that it’s this part of myself – more than any other - that I want to want to honor and cultivate going forward. To be consistently, tenderly, unabashedly and fiercely a writer.
2024 was also a powerful time of evolution in terms of my physical self. Towards the end of the year, I found a training regime that works for me (that would be Orange Theory), after a period of months in which I couldn’t seem to stick to any consistent fitness routine. Running faster, lifting heavier weights and seeing my progress has been so so good.
But the truth of the matter is that I’m 46 years old. I’m in the throes of change as a woman. This has now tangibly manifested in countless ways, and it hasn’t been easy.
Interestingly though, I feel a new awareness of my body, from which I’ve sometimes felt disconnected over the years. I’ve never been one of those people who can tell you where I feel a particular emotion (stress, fear, etc.) corporeally or how I experience daily fluctuations in my sleep or diet. I don’t remember to hydrate every hour or to stretch my legs.
But with change comes better understanding of one’s physical propensities and abilities. Boundaries and needs. Energy above all else. And among the things that I understand better now: I need a softer life. I’m over the hustle and the climb.
Instead, I seek the natural world as much as possible. Whether it’s a walk in the woods behind my house or time near the ocean (they don’t call it “Vitamin Sea” for nothing), touching grass – as the kids these days say — is lifeblood for me. I need sunsets and star-filled skies, the change of the seasons, the peace of wild things.
Of course I can’t talk about 2024 without talking about Treasure Beach (Jamaica), from where I’m writing this post. If you’ve been here a while, you know that this is my second home and a place that I love dearly.
Treasure Beach was devastated by Hurricane Beryl in early July, and my son Rohan and I spent three weeks here in the aftermath, supporting the relief effort. Bearing witness to the community building back with love was an indelible experience: humbling and inspiring in equal measure. As I wrote, it taught me so much – about the environment, about development, about community, about joy and of course about love.
I’m still processing what it all means but what has become abundantly clear to me is that my personal path forward – in 2025 and beyond – has to involve more of that, meaning supporting development where it speaks to my heart. On the ground, at the local level, in ways that are tangible. I’m still exploring how to chart this course, but the ocean is in motion, as they say.
A powerful tool that I employed this year which has been immeasurably valuable in the midst of all of this has been professional development coaching. Among other things, my wonderful coach Roberta encourages me to move beyond either/or mode of thinking and consider how to walk a path that’s aligned with my full self.
The fact that I’m on the path feels hugely significant in and of itself. I can’t wait to see where it will lead.
“Community is flawed—imperfect as any love worth keeping—but still, it is the closest thing to immortality we’ll ever know. To carry each other’s names, each other’s stories, each other’s hopes, into the world and beyond. Community is the best thing we do as humans.” – Frederick Joseph
2024 was also replete with many small joys. The many adventures that I got to share with Rohan, who’s now just a smidge taller than me (can time please stop passing so quickly?!) and whose almost teenage energy I’m loving more than I imagined possible. An epic Florida road trip with my parents, and cozy times with them for Thanksgiving. A plethora of good times with friends. Love, which is abundant and surprising, maybe not always what I imagined but forever the greatest joy.
Joy has also been about music listened to, meals shared, books read (I read 35 books, falling a bit short of my goal of 40 but so it goes), the first pop of the cherry blossoms, the hues of autumn, the perfect symmetry of a butterfly’s wings.
Though myself and others are disassociating from the knowledge of the oncoming political apocalypse in the U.S. and this feeling like it’s the end of days, joy reminds us of our essence. It’s what Carlos Greaves captures beautifully in this essay, where he tells of officiating his friends’ wedding in Puerto Rico in the aftermath of the elections.
“Finally, with about an hour left in the reception, as we were all dancing in the courtyard, the sky gave way, and it began pouring. But, rather than seek shelter, we stayed on the dance floor, letting our drenched clothes cling to our bodies as we swayed even harder to the music. That night, nobody was thinking about the election, or about the next four years. To some, we might’ve been garbage people on a garbage island. But we didn’t see it that way. All we could hear was the music. All we could feel was the rain on our faces. And all we could see was the lush rainforest surrounding us.”
So I say - cheers to more dancing in the rain…
While there was no rain here, I was so glad to close the year back in Treasure Beach. It’s been incredible to return and to see the progress in the rebuilding effort since the hurricane. There’s still a lot of need, but the community here has done amazing things. It’s a time of celebration, and not only because of the holidays.
So yes, I spent the last days of the year waking up to beautiful sunrises. Having sunset beers with friends old and new. Remembering that the sky is in fact peppered with stars, and that our own is but a tiny speck. And of course spending time on and in these gorgeous Caribbean waters, where my heart and soul always feel alive and free.
As I watched the blazing orange sun make its last dip of the year last night, I realized that maybe the greatest gift that 2024 gave me was the realization that I have an amazingly rich constellation of possibility in my life, there for the making.
In many ways, it resembles an assemblage. Assemblage being a work of art made by grouping found or related objects. I’m increasingly convinced that it’s also a life philosophy – a way to weave together stories, moments, places and emotions. A way to live, guided by curiosity and the quest for beauty, knowledge and understanding. It’s multihued and layered – disparate filaments bound by a common thread.
In fact, it’s the way that I’ve always lived. Whether by nature or nurture, it’s hard to say, but having the privilege of living a global life surely has something to do with it. In any case, I’ve always been that person. I assemble people and playlists and artwork and menus and stories. I see life as a tapestry.
So it only seems natural to relaunch this platform under a new name. You might have guessed it already.
ASSEMBLAGE…
Stay tuned for my first post of 2025 under the new name, which will be the long-delayed roundup from the last quarter of the year. I’ll also take the time to tell you more about my plans for Assemblage and some other exciting projects that are on the horizon.
Because you see, I’ve decided that my word for 2025 is Possibility. And I’m so very excited for all the things that are possible, through Assemblage and beyond.
Here in Treasure Beach, under the new moon of the other night - the Capricorn New Moon - I sat on my balcony, under the beautiful constellations of stars, and manifested the possibilities that I hope for in this year ahead. We shall see what may come, but I’m full of hope for what lies ahead.
Wherever you are, I hope that the year is rich in possibility for you as well. Thank you for being here, for reading, for engaging, for encouraging, for sharing and for supporting my work, now under the platform of Assemblage moving forward. It means the world. Happy new year x
Ramya Vivenkanandan: You point out,
"But the truth of the matter is that I’m 46 years old. I’m in the throes of change as a woman. This has now tangibly manifested in countless ways, and it hasn’t been easy.
"Interestingly though, I feel a new awareness of my body, from which I’ve sometimes felt disconnected over the years."
At soon to be 77-years, your best years are ahead of you.
I have been married 51-years to a woman, Nancy, I have loved for 53-years.
As a clueless, awkward boy who became an equally clueless, bookish man, living with Nancy has taught me to be in awe of that wondrous work of nature: The Woman.
It is a miracle of nature how a woman cycles, or how the cycles cease, how she is able to carry a child, and the love she conveys her life long to a child.
Moreover, the girls, the women, were smarter in school, were much more socially mature.
Women have been the ones in my life with keen intellect and quick minds, and are very insightful about persons around them.
I consider my Mom, my Wife, my Daughters, my Granddaughter to be miracles of nature in my life, and are THE source of love and joy in my life.
Your best years are ahead of you!
Your writing and your photography are a source of beauty that I treasure.
Love the word Possibility!