A New Year, A New Focus: My Word For 2025
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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?
Janet Barclay
I eliminate stress for my clients by hosting, monitoring, and maintaining their WordPress sites so they don’t have to worry about security, downtime or performance issues. When I’m away from my desk, I enjoy reading, photography, cooking, watching movies, drinking tea, and spending time with my family.
I’m glad I was able to help you FOCUS on JOY by helping you MAXIMIZE SIMPLICITY and BALANCE through CONNECTING via social media! 😉
You are amazing!
I also agree about decluttering social media. I’m doing the same thing as much as possible since I work with clients on social media. I closed my account on TikTok and Snapchat but signed up for Bluesky.
So many sites to keep track of, old, new, and everything in between! It sounds like many of us are going through the same exercise.
I think Joy has been my word in years past, and what a wonderful choice. Life is to be lived abundantly, so go grab that joy and have a wonderful year, Janet!
Thank you, Seana!
I was sure I commented on this weeks ago, but apparently I only read it!
First, I was also inspired by Hazel’s post. I have a bunch of random, left-behind accounts. (I kept Ryze, if you can believe it, because I’d written so much off-the-cuff content there that doesn’t exist anywhere else.) But Ello? Peach? Post (which shut down). Spoutible? I have friends who are only on Mastodon after they left Twitter, so I keep that to see what’s going on in their lives, but there are so many accounts that I should shutter. I play and share on TikTok with a small circle, and I’m trying to turn Bluesky into my new Twitter-esque playground, but nothing is as fun as Twitter used to be. I keep Facebook primarily for your group, Janet. So much to think about!
As for the word of the year, I hoped something would come to me in January, but I’m still wordless. (Ha, for someone with as many words as I have, that’s a shock.) But I am holding space for the right word to come. I’m thrilled that you’re centering your year around joy, and I hope you have many opportunities to express it!
I’m probably still on Ryze too, simply because I forgot about it!
Maybe the glory days of social media are behind us. I sure hope not. It’s the main way I stay in touch with a lot of people, including distant relatives and former colleagues and classmates, many of whom I have no alternate way to contact.
Joy is a great word for 2025. Is joy for Janet, Others, Your…. lol I hope I added joy to this comment. 2025 is my year for analyzing social media. Thanks for sharing how you did it. I’ll look at Hazel’s post again.
It seems a lot of us are doing that right now – I feel change in the wind!