*Includes some fall 2024, as I transitioned out of sabbatical.
Everyone serves someone, right? When you have a boss, it seems obvious. What if you’re self-employed? My kids think it sounds dreamy, no one telling you what to do. But a self-employed person still considers the needs of their audience; in crass terms, if no one buys what you’re selling, you won’t stay self-employed long. “What if you’re a trust fund baby?” my Hamilton-loving son might inquire. God or mammon, honey—still serving someone.
Setting aside the question of your idolatry of choice, if you’re an employee, chances are you undertake an annual exercise of cataloging accomplishments, goals achieved, lessons learned. Best part of the job—right up there with meetings that should have been emails. Landing somewhere between terror-inducing and just annoying, an annual review is not exactly something you’d expect to miss when out from under the thumb of a direct, visible boss. Yet here I am, writing one, under no duress whatsoever.
Turns out periodically pausing to assess where you’ve been is kinda helpful.
The last year of launching things has felt a little like my first year of college: fresh start after ending a significant chapter, unleashed in a new space, freedom to explore, no expectation everything will stick. Walls covered in spaghetti. What’s come of it? What’s worth keeping? Lacking the persistent gentle nudges of HR, I figured I’d piggyback off the flip of the calendar year to take stock.
The reflection that follows was written for my own learning. But my hope in offering transparency about the journey, beyond pure love of wild oversharing, is creating value for those I serve. If you’re reading this, that’s you. This is me pulling back the curtain on the process (at least, a snapshot of one person’s process) of becoming. It’s not every day we get to be a freshman. I am having to, and getting to, be a beginner on so many fronts. Practicing trying, failing, trying again. Re-learning to learn. Cultivating faith in planting seeds, nurturing soil, growing incrementally. It’s humbling, it’s invigorating.
Thank you for coming along with me! I hope this reflection nudges something in you. Or at least makes you feel less alone writing your own annual review!
2024-2026 Mission:
- Grow in trust and love.
- Provide legal services (a) sufficient to support my family & our goals (including giving, saving) (b) that I enjoy & (c) that add meaningful value and care for clients.
- Publish writing that people *actually read, and that helps them draw nearer to what is good, beautiful and true—ultimately, God.
- Create spaces that help people slow down, rest, and draw nearer to what is good, beautiful and true—ultimately, God
*Post-hoc observation: this is actually outside of my control. Perhaps I should focus on improving my writing and making it accessible to an increasingly wide swath of readers.
Specific goals 2025 (including Fall 2024):
- Bring in just enough revenue in my paid work to provide for our family’s needs (not more—to ensure sufficient space for other things).
- Carve out sufficient space to invest in pursuing writing, spiritual direction, and space with family. Except for periods when school not in session, when I will pause this work (August, Christmas holidays, periodic school breaks).
- Publish or get rejected 12 times by end of December 2025. Double that in 2026.
- On track to complete spiritual direction program. Maintain current directees.
- Retreat offerings?
How’s it going?
- Bring in just enough revenue. My family has had enough. To be frank, some months have been dicey. My husband and I are both freelancers/small business owners with there’s no guarantee of work. No one handing us our next project. The cycle of work, invoicing and receiving payments is unpredictable. You can turn on a dime from slammed to empty-handed and back again. So much is out of your control. These are new realities for me, though probably typical for freelancers. You can’t make things grow—only plant and nurture seeds, be ready when an opportunity arises, exercise patience and trust while you wait. I was told at the outset this way of working would be an opportunity to grow in trusting God. True. Especially when circumstances are like neon lights around your need and dependency. Which means, times when I feel lack actually provides for my primary desire, to grow in trust and love.
- Carve out sufficient space. It’s been hard to know how to divide my time between my various endeavors. A benefit of this way of working can be setting your schedule, ultimate flexibility. Is there a benefit to imposing rigidity anyway? I’ve tinkered with ways of carving sufficient space for each arena. What’s the best approach?
Be content with accomplishing less.
*Not gonna sell a lot of self-improvement books with that one.
(*Actually, best-sellers Essentialism and 4000 weeks basically preach this gospel, so maybe one could have—but now it’s passé? Alas.)
Imagine you have two weeks at home, off your normal work. How many projects and backlogged tasks would you get done? How fully cleared would your to do list and inbox be?
The answer is none. Because those two weeks were Christmas break with my kids, with out-of-town family visiting. What was that time for? Being attentive to humans. And I was. What did it cost me? A twenty car pile-up of uncompleted tasks. Tasks stranded on the roadside, crashed over the guardrail, abandoned tasks scattered all over the pavement.
All this carnage of work left undone feels like a failure. But being present to people well is almost always at odds with getting things done. You don’t make a dentist appointment while you’re swapping stories around a dinner table. And this Christmas, foregoing productivity for people was the right choice—as it often is. Being attentive to other humans is part of what makes us human, part of our purpose, what deeply satisfies us. So guess what? Decreased productivity in pursuit of meaningful human connection isn’t a bug. More like a sign you’re doing it right.
But what do you do with the to do list?
It’s hard to escape the conclusion that the only way forward is ‘be less ambitious.”
Sure, there are better and worse ways to organize time. I’ll keep noodling on that. But some part, maybe the most important part, is deciding what’s most important, giving that attention—and accepting I won’t do as much.
- Publish or get rejected 12 times. I submitted at least 12 pieces. 6 have been published so far (plus some very polite rejections, each of which briefly stings then instigates a round of crushing self-doubt). Submitting to external publications feels like approaching the cool kid table with my strange homemade vegan lunch. There’s a chance I’ll be allowed, but only if I absolutely nail the delivery and Shelby is going through a tempeh phase. I want to increase submissions in 2026, if only to thicken my skin and make both submissions and rejections normal. (But per #2: can I be present to my family, in ministry, to my community, and support my family financially and submit 24 pieces this year? Maybe I need to accept slower growth as a writer, given other important commitments, trusting seeds to grow in time.)
- Complete spiritual direction program. On track, graduating in April, still have a ton of reading between now and then.
- Retreat offerings? Wall. Spaghetti. Let’s go! I didn’t have a sense of what this should involve, let alone a target. Just explore, experiment, play. And that’s what I did.
2025 Numbers:
Retreats & Spiritual Direction:
- # Live retreats hosted at Rock Creek Sanctuary: 6 (+ 2 virtual)
- # Total guests hosted at Rock Creek Sanctuary/virtual events: 87
- # Total events I hosted or participated in (including retreats): 12
- # Total event participants: ~150
- Collaborations with other organizations / leaders: 6
- Overnight guests at Rock Creek Sanctuary: 70 guests, ~255 nights
- Solo retreat guests: 5
- Spiritual directees: 6
Writing:
Approximately 17 pieces of writing pitched externally.
- 6 published.
- 7 rejected.
- Waiting on the rest.
Newsletter & blog posts approximately 2x/month
Other highlights:
- Attended 4 conferences
- First podcast! (Coracle – Listen here!)
- Formed a DC women’s solo entrepreneur community
- Found a literary agent
- Wrote a book proposal
- Endured a few publisher rejections (I’m not famous on Instagram)
- Resolved to learn more about utilizing Instagram effectively (through trial and error – eek!)
- Took on volunteer role as Vice Chancellor for Safeguarding for the ACNA
- Had a hit piece written about me as a result (exciting!)
- Developed my non-profit law practice and provided for my family
My primary take away is to remember I am completing freshman year, and to approach all of this work with the requisite patience and humility. I have been like a racehorse raring to charge the track upon the conclusion of my full-time job and time of sabbatical, but this is not a one-lap sprint. God-willing it’s a new phase of a lifetime of work and ministry. It is not only OK, but right, that I pace myself, welcoming what feels like small, slow starts, and practice persevering for the long game.
During this year of play and exploration, I’ve focused on the interior, trying to allow the external work to be the fruit, rather than focusing as directly on what I do. “Walk with God in trust”—does that count as a strategy? Am I letting myself off the hook, too lazy or disorganized to commit to particulars?
I don’t have a concrete answer, even though I feel something between desire and pressure to resolve it in year two. If I want to get anywhere, don’t I need to buckle down and make a plan?! But what if I’m already somewhere? What if my job is not to propel myself elsewhere, but be present—to others, yes, to God, to myself, here, now, in my own ordinary life? It’s a work in progress.
Thank you for being part of the audience I get to serve. I hope you’ll stick around for sophomore year.
