A New Year, A New Focus: My Word For 2025

Like many others, I usually choose a word to help steer my activities and attitudes for the coming year.

My past words have included CONNECTING, BALANCE, MAXIMIZE, and FOCUS.

For 2024, my chosen word was SIMPLICITY. I won’t bore you with the details of changes it’s led to in my personal and professional lives, but I’d like to share one of the areas I’ve simplified, as it might be something you’d like to do too.

Simplicity through a Social Media Declutter

As the end of the year approached, I came across Hazel Thornton’s post, Clearing Social Media Clutter, where she applied the principles of organizing to her social media accounts. I’d already stopped spending time on social media platforms that weren’t beneficial, but was ready to take it another step.

Following Hazel’s process, I discovered I had 15 profiles, pages and groups for my business, my personal life, and the Golden Horseshoe Virtual Assistant Group (GHVA). I kept all but four, but don’t intend to be active on all of them.

Here are the best ways to connect with me in 2025:

• Join my Blogging Organizers group on Facebook for daily blog-related activities and resources (It’s not just for organizers, though that is the focus)
• Follow me on LinkedIn (if you send a connection request, please include a note, especially if we don’t know each other) – I’ve been relatively inactive but am planning to post at least a couple of times a month, and I do share and comment on other posts
• Follow my business Instagram account to for website and blogging tips
• Follow my personal Instagram account to view my photography (more on that later)
• Follow me on Facebook (send a friend request if we know each other) – I usually post something at least once a day

By focusing on these platforms, I can devote more time and effort to engaging with others, as opposed to just sharing links to my latest blog posts.

I’m keeping the others for various reasons, such as Pinterest for saving blog posts (mine and other people’s) and other random stuff, YouTube because the existing content is embedded on a website or blog, and my Facebook business page because I’m concerned that deleting it might affect my Facebook group or Instagram business account.

I was tempted to check out Threads and/or BlueSky, but in the interest of simplicity decided to hold off, at least for now.

My Word for 2025

For this year, my focus word is JOY: doing more of what brings me joy and less of what doesn’t.

Lucky for me, there are many people and activities that bring me joy; one of them is photography. I’ve been posting almost daily to Instagram (cross-posted to my Facebook profile) for a number of years, and several friends and followers have told me that seeing my photos has helped them get through difficult times. It’s wonderful to know that I can bring joy to others while doing something I enjoy myself!

Joy through a Photography Challenge

I’ve dabbled in a number of daily and weekly photo challenges over the years, and find them to be an excellent source of inspiration. It may seem strange, but I’m the type of person who prefers structure, even in my creative pursuits, and I’ve found that photo challenges are a great way to get that structure as well.

Last year, I flitted around from challenge to challenge, choosing the prompts that interested me. Realizing this was another area where I needed to simplify, I’ve decided that for 2025, I’ll be following the daily prompts from @fms.photoaday. Feel free to follow me on Instagram or Facebook to see how I do!

Have you picked a word for 2025?

Please share it in the comments!

If you take a different approach to the new year, what is it?