still here

notes from the end of the year

There’s a temptation, especially this time of year, to rush toward resolution. To tally wins and losses. To decide whether we did “enough.” Perhaps it’s the byproduct of turning a year older, or the pressure to package our lives into something legible and impressive. But what I’m noticing instead is an appreciation for the fact that I’m still here, still curious, still willing to meet myself and others honestly. In fact, as the year closes, I find myself less interested in evaluating it and more interested in listening to it.

Perhaps two decades of mindfulness practice is the culprit. Much of my life these days is oriented toward the present, which, if I’m honest, is both welcome and bewildering. If someone had asked me twenty years ago to put down my best laid plans and live in the moment, I would have had no idea what that meant. There was a time along my journey when I genuinely thought that if I just sat and practiced this meditation thing long enough, one day I would become enlightened and finally figure it all out.

I never imagined I would arrive here instead, at a place where I have found peace in not being tethered to plans for some future moment. Where presence is not a destination or a badge of spiritual maturity, but a practice I return to again and again, often clumsily and with a great deal of humility.

Living artfully, I am learning, is not about producing something beautiful or meaningful on demand. It is about how we pay attention. It is about whether we are willing to meet our inner life, our creativity, our restlessness, our doubt, with curiosity instead of control. It asks whether we can stay long enough with an experience without rushing to explain it, optimize it, or turn it into proof that we are doing life “right.”

And while I still reflect on a day or process what has occurred, I am increasingly curious about how the noticing itself shows up. What is being asked of me? Is the moment inviting me to simply be with what is happening, or to examine how the experience is shaping me? How did it stretch me? Where did it stretch me? Where did it soften me? Did it teach me something I did not want to learn? Was it healing in ways I could not name at the time? And how did it carry me, subtly and faithfully, to this exact moment?

I will say that at various points throughout the year, I was reminded, sometimes gently, sometimes insistently, to be here. As unremarkable as it sounds, the invitation was almost always the same: this breath, this body, this moment. To pause long enough to be in relationship with what was showing up. To notice what it was tugging at along the edges of my awareness. To let creativity arise not from force, but from openness and attention.

And maybe that is enough.

Not because everything is finished or figured out, but because there is something deeply grounding about recognizing that we did not arrive here by accident. We arrived by living. By choosing. By avoiding and returning. By enduring. By trying again. By letting go when we could. By holding on when we needed to.

If you are reflecting too, I hope you can offer yourself grace, appreciation not just for what you accomplished, but for what you endured, what you learned, and who you are still growing into.

Here’s to standing right where we are, unpolished, unresolved, but awake. Attentive. Willing to stay. Open to whatever comes next.

This is what it means to live artfully.

© Alana Foy 2025