Are you a new year’s resolution setter? I’m not, but I do take some time at the end of each year to reflect on the year gone by and look ahead to the coming year. With that in mind, I’m ready to wrap up 2024 and reveal my theme for the new year. Are you ready?

Welcome to the 95^th edition of The Sunday Spark, a series with weekly thoughts and highlights, nuggets of learning, and a simple living challenge for the week. In addition to my theme for the new year, this week’s edition discusses National Bird Day, eco-friendly search engines, and setting smaller goals. 

On my mind this week: My theme for the new year

At the beginning of 2024, I set a theme for the new year for the first time ever. In my first Sunday Spark of the year, I declared 2024 as my “Year of Reinvention” as I looked ahead to retiring from my full-time job at the end of June.

My year of reinvention was a busy and fulfilling one for me. Here are some of the highlights.

• In February, I took part in Dry Feb and raised $651 for the Canadian Cancer Society. This also led me to reduce my alcohol consumption for the rest of the year.
• Last winter, I participated in the Alpha Course at my church as a group helper.
• On June 27, I officially retired from my full-time job after a month of celebrations.
• It was a year of milestones, as I celebrated my 60^th birthday and our 30^th anniversary in July.
• After running a successful pilot workshop and logging the required practice coaching hours, I earned the Certified Professional Retirement Coach designation in May. In October, I officially launched my retirement coaching practice. (Learn more on my Second Life Vision website.)
• I completed the two remaining courses for the Plain Language certificate that I have been working on for almost five years.
• My work-related travels took me to Montreal, Northern California, Nashville, Arizona, Chicago, and Milwaukee.
• In August, I spent two and a half weeks visiting family in Ireland with my Mum and my sister. While in Ireland, I did something I swore I would never do. I conquered my fear and drove on those scary, narrow, winding roads.
• As I reprised the 52-Week Decluttering Challenge, I decluttered 676 items and 1265 digital files.
• I read 36 books—consistent with 2023 when I read 37.
• Finally, I got into a great groove with my fitness routine and kept it going throughout the year.

For a recap of my blogging year, see Blog highlights of 2024 and a sneak peek at 2025.

Looking ahead to 2025

As I sat down to think about what I want 2025 to look like, I wrote down three words. Simplicity. Intentionality. Purpose. After some thought, I settled on Intentionality as my theme for the new year. I will share more in upcoming posts, but here are a few of my plans for the year:

• Complete the final project to earn the Plain Language Certificate.
• Launch my retirement coaching workshop.
• Read 50 books, including 12 non-fiction books.
• Follow through on my handwritten note project.
• Work towards consistently logging 400 minutes of physical activity every week. That includes workouts and daily walks.
• Make some progress on the book I’m working on with a couple of colleagues.
• Start compiling some of the best nuggets of wisdom from my blog posts into a collection of memoirs for my daughters.

Let’s keep in touch! Join my mailing list and I’ll email you when I add a new post.

Three highlights of the week

It’s important to celebrate big milestones and simple pleasures in life. Keeping the trend going, here are three highlights and simple pleasures of the week gone by:

• Last weekend, we celebrated Christmas with my husband’s side of the family. Thanks to our niece’s three-year-old daughter and one-year-old twins, it was a lively gathering and a lot of fun!
• After three years of playing Wordle every day, I finally got lucky and solved it in one guess. Now I need a new starting word.
• My daughter Colleen and I have been playing the new games we got for Christmas, including Monopoly Deal and Yahtzee Words.

Things I learned this week

Life is all about learning. Here are a couple of things I learned this week:

It’s National Bird Day

Today is National Bird Day—a day to take a walk in nature and observe birds in their natural habitats. There aren’t a lot of birds in our area at this time of year, but I’m always delighted to see red cardinals against a snowy background!

Fun fact: There are 9800 species of birds on earth, and none of them have teeth!

(Source: Happy Eco News)

Eco-friendly search engine

How many times a day do you do an online search? Do you use Google? Or Bing? Would you consider switching to a different search engine that is kinder to the planet?

Ecosia is an eco-friendly search engine that plants a tree for every 50 searches. To date, that adds up to 217 million trees. If Ecosia replaced Google as the world’s most popular search engine, it could offset all vehicle emissions worldwide. And as a bonus, it’s more private than Google!

Consider doing something good for the planet and switch to Ecosia. Learn more at The Carbon Almanac.

This week’s simple living challenge – Smaller goals

Simplifying life is a big part of living more intentionally. With that in mind, I kicked off the year with 52 ways to simplify your life this year, including a downloadable checklist of weekly tasks.

This week’s challenge is to replace those sweeping resolutions with smaller goals. There’s still time to set your own theme for the new year and resolve to build some new habits in 2025.

I’d love to hear what you think about any of this week’s topics. Drop me a comment below and let me know your thoughts and ideas.