Hello again, fam,
It’s always a bit weird to come back to draft posts from a year ago and “finish” the work started 365 days ago. I’ve learned a lot since 2023 and framed a good chunk of the year around shifting my priorities — intentionally vague, open-to-interpretation, cryptic vibes.
2024 “Priorities”
- Defining: I’m ridiculously bad at defining things. I like to keep most things “grey” and follow “vibes” rather than name and, to some degree, lend a term or condition power. Centering priorities in 2024 meant actually defining my priorities, my terms, and my conditions.
- Prioritizing: When I do define a term or condition as a “priority,” I often hold it in tension with other “priorities.” This year, prioritizing really required a bit more ordinal and linear thought. (You know me. You know I’m bad at this.)
- De-prioritizing: I fear some things don’t serve me in the way I predict, argue, or expect, or find upon reflection. Early in this year, setting “priorities” translated to taking some things off of my list entirely. (TLDR: Sometimes de-prioritizing translated to “deleting” or departing from harms.)
- Protecting: An unexpected outcome of 2024 was “protecting my peace” as a priority. I don’t know that I necessarily intended to protect my peace, but I know I wanted to prioritize my wellbeing. An unintended consequence of this was more protection, self reflection, and learning.
As I look ahead to 2025, two thoughts remain in tact. Forgive me if they are lost in transit.
When I look back I find resonance with Somara Theodore’s question for her fellow Earthlings: “Would you do a year off social media?” I think about how she got to the point of becoming more of “Mara” — more of herself — and wondered for quite some time about my priorities.
Somara Theodore said her decision to take a year off from platforms like Instagram and Facebook and Twitter came after she lost her little sister to cancer and endured the end of her marriage — coming “face to face” with her “deepest fears”
The idea of posting my highest moments for my sister to see when she was at her lowest — it just didn’t sit right to me. … I remembered how significant it is that we’re present in every moment with our loved ones. I remembered how important it is that we fortify relationships with those we care about by actually connecting, tapping in, not just “keeping tabs.”
— Somara Theodore “Mara’s Diary” Nov. 27, 2024
Brittany Broski has been an internet legend, making her mark as “kombucha girl” before moving on to lead a mini media empire online. One of her media creations is “The Broski Report” — it’s a podcast and space and place for the community she has grown online. This year, she said something that really captured exactly what it was like to start making these changes:
“I am at a point in my life where I am trying to let go of things that do not serve me. And in letting go of some of that stuff, I’m gonna leave claw marks on it, because I love some of that stuff, and I love some of those people.”
Brittany Broski “Broski Report” Love Island & Michaelangelo Sept. 17, 2024
I took no joy in letting go of anything this year, including my ridiculously voracious social media habits. Working in any part of media can inadvertently bring about this need to be locked in to a digital world that I don’t live in. It is a time suck that has so rarely improved me as a person.
So, I made a ton of changes. People who know me saw less of me on Facebook and Snapchat, more curation on Instagram and X/Twitter/Whatever, and no posts on YouTube. I posted more blogs, read more books, and worked on figuring out why I do some of the things I do — writing vaguely, losing time, settling into confusion rather than investigation.
These time consuming practices led me to a decision I was basically at the doorstep of: redirecting my focus elsewhere and making priorities private but real.
I see my future as being one that is much more speaking and changing and acting and sounding like the me I seek to become. I am adjusting my priorities toward those things I want to attract more of in life, declaring more truths rather than letting reality fall into my lap.
With that, I share my public priorities, adjusted throughout the year, toward a better me:
- Public Works: I will cement public-facing works that I have yet to really lean into. What We Know Now will actually materialize into a public practice space for those aspects of scholarship and media criticism I most feared this year.
- Distinct Creativity: I am prioritizing collaborative creativity over self-destructive exclusion, which I’ve become good at by disappearing. skyverson lee will do that in 2025.
- Expert Precisions: I will work (not to my mental detriment) on becoming a refined version of the me I love deeply through the above practices. I will do this without losing my voice.
- Relief: I will seek to become more of an “I” than a “we” by creating more peace and seeking less trauma in my day-to-day life.
- My Mask, Your Mask: Finding chaos in peace can be challenging, but I know two things well. First, I cannot help another person while in disarray on my own. Second, I cannot create or destroy, only transform. In order to act for others I must be okay and, as time moves forward, I will focus on becoming a best and uniformed/singular self.
My final note is on those who brought life to my spaces and places before they lost their life this year. I’m struck by the phrases brought to me by those losses, which I mean every single time I say and write them: “I’m blessed by your presence” and “you have my unending gratitude.”
I have been blessed by their presence up until some of their last waking moments on this Earth. Their voices are among those I’m overwhelmed to have heard and grateful to have been in proximity to.
You, dear reader, are no different. I’m glad to be in your presence, even if virtually, and I’m blessed to be in the presence of those who choose to call me a colleague, peer, mentee, mentor, or friend.
You have my unending gratitude,
Ivy A. Lyons
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