My Words For 2025, But First…

Before I move forward, I need to put 2024 (and the whole last decade) to rest.

Resilience and a New Decade

2025 is more than a new year for me. Just over a month ago, I celebrated my 40th birthday, welcoming in an entirely new decade. Not just turning a page, but closing a whole book and starting anew. I could, of course, choose to see absolutely any date auspiciously through my carpe diem goggles, but there’s nothing like catching the wave of a good calendar milestone and climbing on top to ride the natural momentum to a new place.

I began my 30s with a divorce. I departed from the life path I had designed up to that point, took off solo, and traveled the world nomadically for three years. I was just getting back into my groove in so many powerful ways when the pandemic hit and decimated nearly all of that groove in one disgustingly massive fell swoop. 

It was a total knockout. And honestly, I think I’m only now coming to. I can tell, because I feel more like the ME I knew was sequestered somewhere inside and less like the automaton I became overnight in 2020.

This past decade has been as abrupt and full of opposites as a Picasso painting, even more so than my twenties when I moved around so much that even my parents didn’t know where I was from week to week. Despite it all, I’m deeply proud of myself for hanging in there. Now that I feel coherent again, I can look back in awe of what I was able to accomplish given the various states I found (or lost) myself in. And I think it was a decade that can be summed up in one word: resilience. 

I’m reminded of a cactus I once met on a mountain in the desert of Baja California Sur. One that survives drought, wind, relentless heat and sun, and yet still manages to stand tall amidst its challenges, overcoming any adversity sent its way, set on climbing towards the stars, no matter how slow its progress. 

I want to be like that cactus. 

Resilience doesn’t mean you don’t suffer, it just means you find any way possible to not give up entirely. It means you have a will to keep going, and where there is a will, you will find a way. And maybe grow some sharp natural defense mechanisms while you’re at it.

The Blank Screen of Depletion

2024 was a bitch. There, I said it. For you too, hey? Now that it’s over, it seems it was a bitch for most people. Weird that it felt like it was just me while it was happening.

You know when your phone dies, and it’s so dead that even when you plug it back in, the lightning bolt charging symbol doesn’t even register for several minutes? Blank screen. No signs of life. That’s how I felt for the majority of 2024. 

I started with some really great, really big intentions, because, you know, new year, new calendar milestone wave to catch, but what actually happened is that I went quadruple overhead and crashed, rag dolling under the weight of it all.

The timing of said crash was somewhat unbelievable, as it happened smack in the middle of two truly exciting projects that I was honored to be a part of. It also happened smack in the middle of the day, under the gorgeous Arizona desert sun, surrounded by birdsong and blue skies. Because that’s when I was living in my truck. That part, while immensely beautiful at times, brought on immense challenges I never expected that I had to deal with alongside everything else.

I cracked wide open. Lost it completely as I sat alone in my camp chair, next to a cactus in the desert. The irony only just hit me.

Somehow, and with the serendipitous help of my brother who just *happened* to call me during my meltdown, I was able to pull it together long enough to thoroughly kick ass at the second project and still feed and water myself as I finished out my truck camper time in Arizona.

Not long afterwards, I left for a six-week Europe trip that included only travel with friends. No extended solo time, no JUMP Adventures trips, just good old adventuring with some of my favorite people. Exhale. 

It was somewhere on the quiet cobbled backstreets of Estonia, or maybe it was on the boat crossing between two continents in the Strait of Gibraltar, or maybe flying on a bike down a winding mountain road on the island of Mallorca, surrounded by shimmering sea, that I began to feel like I had found my charging cord. I knew I was working on plugging myself back in. Baby steps.

By the time I arrived back in the US, the sweet summer sunshine had arrived, and my truck camper time in AZ was over. I drove back to Montana where I moved into an actual house, worked my ass off to launch some new trips for JUMP Adventures, and then told my team I needed a break. Like, a real break.

When you’re a solopreneur, you really have no one to lean on, no one to take your place in case of emergency. In the eleven years since starting my business, I’d never taken a break, never used an Out Of Office reply, never truly let go of my inbox. Not once. GROSS. But I didn’t know how to step away, and that’s why it took me so long to do it. The problem is, by that point I was so beyond burnout that I was ready to start getting to know my neighbors at Camp I Don’t Care Anymore.

Sound. The. Alarm. I recognized that if I didn’t step away, I would burn the whole thing to the ground like a young Drew Barrymore, hair flying, eyes flaming, feeling nothing as I wreak havoc in my pajamas. 

That’s precisely when I dropped everything and took a two-month staycation sabbatical.

And, that’s when the magic happened.

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Carley (you know her — she’s been on the podcast multiple times, she’s been on nine of my JUMP trips and is a staple in my travel world) became my Administrative Shield Maiden. Watch TF out, Carley throws down. She protected me and my sacred personal space like a one-woman force field, handling everything work-related that was hurled my way for those two months, allowing me the rest I needed. Adding a wee footnote here for the self-help-minded: read the book Who Not How (affiliate link). And get yourself a Carley.

It wasn’t until about halfway through my sabbatical that I felt like the recharge energy was finally hitting me. As I slept, read books, stared at the wall, played ice hockey, camped, hiked, learned to golf (who, ME?!), spent many hours in the sunshine, and zero hours at my desk, I could feel the life energy begin to buzz through me again. My tiny lightning bolt finally appeared. 

Only by letting go completely was I able to create the space to reassess what I really wanted, for myself and for my business. Hence, some changes that you may begin to recognize throughout my various platforms. 

And hence… my words for 2025… and finally getting to the point around here.

My Words for 2025

Every year I choose a word for the year, a beacon to guide me toward whatever goals I have set for myself, both personally and for my business. 

This year, I have two. (I make my own rules).

CORE

One thing I realized is that in 2024 (and the handful of years prior) I was leaning a lot on other people to determine my way forward (and honestly hoping they’d just carry me while they were at it). I had lost all sense of self confidence and direction, except somehow during those two aforementioned projects that sandwiched my breakdown. Those felt like me, those lit me up.

Those two projects included speaking at the Travel Goods Show in Vegas and creating video content with Osprey at their headquarters in Colorado. Interestingly, neither of those project invitations had anything to do with any arena in which I was leaning on others — both directly applauded and derived from my achievements just for being me, just as Traveling Jackie. 

That felt good. And also a little confusing, as I was following a path to expanding JUMP Adventures into an operation that would require a full team and lots of big business plans. Hmm… Have I stopped myself recently to deeply explore what I really want? If I’m being honest with myself, I really hadn’t. I was just “going with the flow” (which, IMHO, is decidedly created by others), and taking the next natural step “everyone” takes in business — growth and scale. Um… the last time I followed Path Everyone Else Is Doing It was when I got married… 

Right. Turns out, big expanding business plans for JUMP Adventures did not align with what I truly wanted, nor could I see myself successfully navigating at the helm of an even bigger ship than the one I already had.

Whoa.

It was only through the sabbatical, stepping away from the ship entirely, that I was able to really figure that out.

A quick side bar here for why it’s so important as an entrepreneur to figure out what you really want in and for yourself and your business: if your work inspiration doesn’t come from within the courageous and magical you that started your creative endeavor in the first place, it means you’re creating completely at the requests and demands and noisy voices of others. You know what else looks like that? A job. If you’re working for anyone other than yourself and anything other than the dreams you believe in that led you to entrepreneurship in the first place, you might as well let someone else cut you a paycheck while you’re at it. It. Doesn’t. Work.

And that brings me back to CORE.

To me, CORE means the heart of me (gee… etymology, anyone?). What I want, who I am, what I stand for. Like the apple, whose core protects its very life-producing seeds and remains even after the rest of the fruit has been stripped away. 

As a solopreneur designing a business (and also as a human designing a life), there is nothing more important to me than authenticity. In the shit-show moments of the last handful of years, I often felt I had lost track of that. But, if I go back to my core, my core values, my core strengths, my core beliefs, the innermost part of me, therein will I find what truly motivates me and guides me to building a path of my own, not following one like a lemming.

Putting on my personal earmuffs is how I’ve operated most of my life and guided myself through my biggest phases of personal growth. I do not want to lose my personal earmuffs, my inner voice, my own true north, my core. 

So, I’ll be taking “CORE” for a ride this year, to remind myself to stay true to my authentic self, and have confidence in my own strengths, once again. 

ACTIVATE

My second word is ACTIVATE, because I’m finally feeling more like myself, like I’ve recharged a lot, and like I’m ready to function again. Like, actually be able to respond to an email with complete sentences and spearhead massive new projects that align with what I really do want. It’s almost unreal to me how long I spent unraveled and yet how quickly I’ve been able to thread myself back together over the past six months. I mean, I was there, I know what I felt like.

Seriously people — sabbatical. ✨ Powerful magic right there. Also, professional coaching.

I’m ready to continue creating the trail I started for myself so long ago. The one no one else can see or create for me, that looks like me, feels so right, and will undoubtedly lead me to wildly amazing outcomes. The one marked by cacti, reminding me that my core strength, resilience, resourcefulness, and desire to reach for the stars is enough to carry me through. 

I love the life I’ve created. I really do. I am so grateful to be location independent, able to travel the world pretty much wherever and whenever I want to, among friends, and get paid for it. Of course there are incredibly large challenges I face by creating this path, but that is life, no matter which path we choose. 

I AM THE TIDE

I was recently in a strategy meeting with my podcast magician Hayden, and he listened to my update (much like the content of this blog post), sat back, and said “You know that quote, ‘a rising tide lifts all ships’? YOU are the tide.” Hell yes I am. ✨ I’ll take it, knowing that I survived the crashing waves to get here.

What’s your word for the year? What does it mean to you?