Staying in Motion
A year of following nudges, a different way at looking at new year resolutions
We crossed over. 2026.
Like you, perhaps, I find myself looking back at 2025 and wondering what this new year might hold. In these reflective moments, I sometimes get a nudge to write New Year’s resolutions or map out goals. But the urge passes (thankfully), and I’m reminded of what I know to be true for me:
Movement is life.
It’s a phrase I repeated to myself when I began running daily in November 2022, and it became the name of my blog and Substack. At the time, I committed to a run streak—running every day for at least one mile, or five minutes on particularly dire days when a mile felt impossible. The goal was simple: support my health and build consistency.
Within two weeks, I realized running every day was about far more than just cardio and consistency.
Running allowed me to see nature and myself differently. Over 271 consecutive days (my streak ended in Amsterdam in 2023), I experienced the changing seasons and the unforgiving nature of nature itself—running in rain, sleet, ice, cold, heat, wind, and pollen.
And there was beauty too: seeing daffodils pop up after the dead of winter, running on sidewalks with children’s side walk chalk drawings, waving to my 80 year old neighbor on her daily walks, sunsets while running in Florence, Italy; running near the Brooklyn Bridge in NYU; sunrises in the French Quarter of New Orleans.
During these daily runs, I learned so much about myself—how I think and what was top of mind each morning. What I was carrying mentally each day.
While I ran, I got answers to work and life decisions I needed to make. I got clear. I read more. I cooked more. I loved more.
Just the small act of movement was a domino effect for so many other parts of my life.
I kept thinking while running, movement is life. When you move—when you take action—life shifts. Not in the ways I expected, like weight loss, faster miles, or training for a half-marathon.
The real shifts were unexpected. Changes I couldn’t resolution my way into.
In the past, I made really specific New Year’s resolutions that all failed by February. I stopped believing in resolutions the moment I noticed how quickly they fell apart.
What I trust now is movement. And not attaching myself to an outcome. Instead I follow a signal from within. I act. Then I act again.
I’ve learned that I don’t change and grow because I planned/mapped it. I changed/grew/shifted because I moved. I stayed in motion.
At first glance, choosing movement might sound like a New Year’s resolution in and of itself. It is a decision, a declaration, after all. But that’s where the similarity ends. I think we fail at resolutions because we overplan—getting overly specific about outcomes, steps, to-do’s and desires.
I make no promises to myself about results, steps. No guarantees. No finish lines. Because change rarely happens on a tidy, linear timeline.
Building new habits can take years, even decades.
It’s a year-over-year endeavor. If I am really honest with myself, I’ve been working on the same family of “resolutions” since my first year in college in 1995.
What Stayed in Motion For Me in 2025
Looking back on 2025, I stayed in motion with several nudges I felt at the beginning of the year.
One of them was a pull to study art history. I made no specific plans in January. But in February and June, business travel for my day job took me to New York City. After facilitating a leadership conference, I spent my early evenings at The Met and the Whitney Museum.
I saw the Superfine: Black Tailoring exhibition, John Singer Sargent in Paris, and Edges of Ailey. All three would go on to inform my art history self-study.
Two of them sparked my exploration of art from the Harlem Renaissance, which I later studied extensively offline—almost as if I had enrolled myself in an Art History course for the year—and wrote about here on Substack. This enriched my life, painting practice and art knowledge in so many ways.
I continued going to art exhibits, almost one every month throughout 2025. I had no plans for my summer travel to become a kind of study abroad art experience. But during six weeks in Ghana, Copenhagen, France, and London, museums, artists’ homes, and street art all became part of the adventure.
My Accidental Morning Pages Practice
On an ordinary day back in March, I picked up one of the art books on my coffee table and started reading the introduction pages (always read the intro pages of art books—they’re chock full of history). I flipped through the pages while sipping tea, occasionally stopping to watch the morning light bounce off my walls.
When I closed the book to jump on a business call I was dreading, I noticed my mood had shifted. I felt centered, calm, and open. It was as if I had meditated or done a short yoga flow.
I attributed it to that slow morning with the art book, so I tried it again and again over many mornings throughout the year. I eventually began calling it my morning pages.
Each time, pairing an art book or a poem by Mary Oliver or Kahlil Gibran with a slow morning centered me and supported my art history nudge. Again, not from an overly planned resolution list, but simply by moving toward the art book, my morning habits shifted.
My Solo Art Exhibit and Selling My Art
I had my first solo art exhibition in July 2025, after being a practicing artist for just about 18 months. I didn’t wait for a gallery to offer me a show.
A friend with a beautiful space sponsored it, and we simply followed the nudge and made it happen. Shortly after, I sold several pieces, almost all of them within a few days. I hadn’t expected them to sell so quickly, but they found new homes, and that realization stopped me in my tracks: wait, you really have something to offer here. You are an artist…
This was significant for me. For most of my adult and professional life, I had oriented myself around a corporate executive identity, not a creative one. I’m still on executive teams and still work in the corporate world, but it’s no longer my only identity. I am also an artist. A maker. And I love that for me.
So much so that I now use my time here on Substack to deliberately focus on art, making, and learning. I intentionally refrain from writing about too much about my working professional life because I no longer lead with my corporate identity even in social settings. I am completely shifted.
I have so many other examples of nudges that I followed in 2025 such as letting an old friendship die on the vine, family challenges and triumphs, professional life big wins and big losses but they involve being too intimate online and I firmly believe that some life stories are too precious and nuanced to casually drop online so I’ll keep those for my analog life.
I hope 2026, for both me and you, surprises us and keeps us in motion toward whatever shifts are meant for us.
I've enjoyed watching your art bloom here on substack in 2025, and I am so happy that you did a solo exhibition. I love the ease with which you have claimed your identity as an artist. I still feel hesitant to do so. And I am disappointed with myself because I feel the need for external validation in order to say I am an artist. I entered an artwalk in 2025, and in 2026 I would like to enter some of my larger watercolors in a local gallery's call for artists. Let's see if that gives me the validation I need to settle into an artist identity.
You are my inspiration! Happy new year, Janet 💖