The Year of Less: Vision Boards, Awards, What’s Next in 2025

It’s been awhile since we’ve been in your feed, probably because we took a hiatus in March of 2024. Nearly a year later, we have some clarity on what’s next (it’s exciting!).

The new show will launch on January 14, but on Sunday I shared that 2025 is The Year of Less and at least 5 people said they were interested in hearing more about what that means and I couldn’t wait ANOTHER week because I simply don’t have the brain storage space.

In this episode, we cover:

What practices led me to this new iteration of the podcast
How my family closes out an old year and makes room for a new one my vision board process (don’t cringe!), which I learned from the wonderful Elizabeth Kott.

Transcripts may not appear in their final version and are subject to change.

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Um, how are you? Most of us say fine or good, but obviously it’s not always fine, and sometimes it’s not even that good. This is a podcast that gives people the space to be honest about how they really feel.

It’s a place to talk about life, the good, the bad, the awkward, the complicated. I’m Nora McInerny, and this is Thanks For Asking. Hi everybody, it’s Nora here.

This is a surprise episode. It’s a surprise to you. It is a surprise to me.

I wasn’t planning on releasing an episode this week, but I had floated the idea of an episode like this over on the Substack, and at least three people expressed interest. And I said, well, that’s good enough for me.

It has been a while since we announced in March of 2024 that we were taking a hiatus from Terrible, Thanks For Asking, that we would be taking a break from our production schedule and that we would be honoring the subscribers that we had on Apple

Plus at the time and on Patreon and publishing there while we kind of regrouped and figured out what was going on. So this episode, I am giving you an update.

I’m giving you an update on the show and I’m giving you an update on the holiday season, on the exercises that I did at the end of last year and the beginning of this year, including some of the activities that kind of got me to this point in the

show’s history and in the show’s future. So it is all connected. If you could see me right now, I would be gesturing wildly. I would be gathering up red string, tacking things to a wall.

I actually do have an entire wall that is for me to push pin things to for that reason because I am a very visual learner and sometimes it just takes me a minute to figure out what’s happening and I got to look at it.

So first things first, we’re going to start with the future of this show. If you are a subscriber on Substack or if you were previously on Patreon or Apple Plus, this is not news to you.

But things change, people change, art changes and Terrible, Thanks For Asking has been, I would say, the most important work that I’ve ever done in my life. And that is not to discount the excellent work that I did.

You know, doing digital marketing for brands like Great Clips. That was also deeply meaningful work. And I’m not even joking.

I actually really love Great Clips as a company, and I really, really loved their leadership. But Terrible, Thanks For Asking was a reflection of where I was when I created that show. I was pretty freshly widowed.

I was in a very, very messy middle part of grief. I was…

I was looking for meaning, and I was also finding meaning everywhere in other people, in their stories, and the fact that every single person that I encounter or ever did encounter or ever will encounter is carrying something big and heavy and most

often invisible to me. It was an exercise in remembering over and over how deeply unspecial I am. And that is not an insult to me.

I actually find it extremely comforting to know that even the things that I was sure set me apart from the world, really just make you a part of the world. We all have to go through something, many, many somethings.

Very rarely do we get to choose the trial or tribulation or trauma that we go through. Do we ever get to choose it? I don’t know.

I’m sure at least one person got to choose their own adventure. They’re out there somewhere. I don’t think that I’ve met them.

But it was an honor to make it. It has been. It has also been a challenge, a challenge emotionally, a challenge psychologically, a challenge at many points financially.

The podcast industry has changed drastically over the past few years. And while I am forever proud of the choice that I made to take this show independent, I do not think that there was a better option for me.

I do think that was the exact right move for me to make in that moment. I would not change that for anything. It’s been hard financially as well.

It has been for a lot of reasons that if people are interested in, I’ve got a whole big thing written. I’ve got like just a real inside baseball kind of thing that I’ve wrote. I’ve even recorded a year ago and was like, I don’t need to publish this.

But that might go over on the Substack. It’s just time for a change. It’s time for a change.

This episode is different from other episodes of Terrible, Thanks For Asking because it’s not going to be called Terrible, Thanks For Asking anymore.

I am bringing the show back in a new form, in a new format, and it’s going to be called Thanks For Asking. There are a lot of parts of it that will remain the same. I am still the host.

We are still talking to people about their lives. It will not be the big, deep dive, narrated, highly produced stories that we made on Terrible, Thanks For Asking for so long.

I am, along with the team, making it up as I go and really following the things that interest me because that’s what I need creatively, and that’s the kind of energy that I need in my life.

And I know that not everyone’s going to like that, and that’s okay. That’s okay. It is, I have learned, quite impossible to make every single person happy with every single thing that you attempt to do.

And that’s not to say that I haven’t tried. I have tried so hard and really run myself in the ground trying to anticipate what everybody wants for me and then do that.

And I really have felt very lost for a number of years while also feeling grateful and also feeling burned out and also feeling excited at times and also feeling just many, many things at once because lots of things can be true.

It can be deeply meaningful work and it can also be time for me to step away from that work.

And not just because the material is very heavy or because it is, you know, a difficult, very time consuming, expensive way to produce a show, but because it doesn’t really reflect who I am and where I am anymore. I’m not that terrible.

Everything that I do will always have a little bit of a sprinkle of sadness to it. I can’t help it. I will always be a person who is in danger of ruining a party by telling you something that it just is not appropriate for the time or place.

I will corner people at social gatherings and get into very deep conversations about their lives that neither of us anticipated because it’s called a happy hour, not a whatever kind of hour I’ve brought to the party. So that’s a big change.

I know it. The show is going to be available in its entirety ad free over on my Substack. There have always been so many places to get my work, this work.

We had a Patreon. We had Apple Plus. I’ve had my Substack.

It’s all just going to be at one place, just one place, one place. And a lot of it is still going to be available for anybody who needs it. Those archives of Terrible, Thanks For Asking are out there.

The full archive is available on my Substack for subscribers. New episodes of Thanks For Asking in their entirety will be on the Substack for subscribers. We will put out short versions of the podcast here with ads.

And by here, I mean on the main feed, on Apple Plus or on Spotify, but the breadth of the work, the full depth of the work is going to be available in one place, and that is Substack. It’s the easiest place. It’s the most pleasant place for me.

As a creator, I’ve really enjoyed it. I am, at my core, a writer, and so I write a weekly essay that’s available for anybody, and I am excited to relaunch the podcast there.

I know that, you know, that kind of monetary participation or support is not possible for everybody. I get that fully. So there is always going to be work that is available to anybody.

We put up two YouTube episodes or videos up a week. That will, that’s linked in the show description. There’s the archives of Terrible, Thanks For Asking.

I write something for free every week. So there’s always going to be work that is available. But this is the right move, the right move that makes it possible for me to do this work and make it emotionally and financially feasible.

The podcast ad market, it just ain’t what it used to be. You can probably tell when you’re listening to podcasts that things have changed, when you hear those radio ads that are not read by the host.

And again, if you don’t want to listen to this, I would just fast forward like three minutes if this part is boring to you. But when you hear more ads like that and you’re like, oh my god, why are there so many ads?

The market really has changed and I don’t like it. I don’t like hearing from an advertiser and having them be like, well, no one actually bought the thing. So will you give us like a free social media post?

Will you do this? Will you do that? And this is stuff I should probably not be like talking trash about because, you know, but I don’t like that.

I don’t like that. And I know that, you know, listeners also don’t love ads, but ads are how podcasts get made and produced. And when you hear those ones that sound like radio ads, those are what podcasters get paid the least for.

And those are also the most abundant in many respects. And I don’t know, it’s like a, it’s a whole thing.

And at various points in the making of the show, I have had the luck and the privilege to be able to really cherry pick the brands that I want to work with. And at some point, that has not been quite as possible.

So turning down advertisers also means turning down the money that makes the show possible and that people who work on the show rely on. And it’s just like kind of a tricky place to be.

And again, I don’t expect everybody to be able to be like, well, yeah, I’ll just, like, I get it. I get it. It’s a lot.

But the point is, I am really excited about this. I’m excited about exploring new things on this show. I’m explored.

I’m excited about a new creative challenge. And I’m excited to make things, make things again. And a part of this, a part of this is that I really do want to do an old-fashioned call-in show.

So if you follow along on the Substack, I will be putting up links there and also on my Instagram when the phone lines are open. You can just snag a spot. You’ll call in and we can chat about whatever it is you want to chat about, okay?

And I’m very, very excited for that aspect of it too.

So moving in to the other topics that I said that we would discuss here, we’re going to chat about the new year, the old year, and the things that I did that led me to this place, that led me to Thanks For Asking, that led me to all of these changes,

which feel like they happened very, very, very slowly. My aha moments are never like the flip of a floodlight. It is like a dimmer switch with a 40 watt light bulb moving ever so slowly.

I’m in the studio, I have friends over, I have gone to Michael’s and gotten canvases and boards and Mod Podge and glue sticks, and I have been gathering magazines and we sit on the floor and we make vision boards.

And while I am wary of the woo in many cases, I am also a participator. And no, I do not think like, oh, you can just manifest the life you want. I think maybe it’s manifestation, maybe it’s privilege, babe.

It could be maybe a mix of both. But I also think that there is something to keeping your eye on the prize. You steer where you stare.

And by you, I mean me. I do need a reminder of what is important to me. What is the goal?

Because I will get swept away. I will get swept away in other people’s opinions and other people’s ideas and what I believe I’m supposed to be doing or what I should be doing. Nobody should themselves like me, baby.

Even after years of saying, don’t should yourself. I still have a tendency to do it from time to time. So we sat on the floor and I had one thing going into that day.

I had the Kate Bear poem that I love. It’s called Idea. I will enjoy this life.

I will open it like a peach in season, suck the juice from every finger, run my tongue over my chin. I will not worry about cliches or uninvited guests peering in my window. I will love and be loved, save and be saved a thousand times.

I will let the want into my body. Bless the heat under my skin. My life, I will not waste it.

I will enjoy this life. I’ve seen, read, heard that poem a thousand times. Every time it stops me in my tracks, I have bought prints, I have mailed them to my sisters.

I love that poem. That poem was going to be the center of 2024. I knew that.

I had that printed out. That is all I had. I sat down, I started pulling images, ripping things apart, pasting them together, and what emerged was this vision that probably would not make sense to anybody except me.

So if you go over on the Substack, you will see an image of this. I’ll link it in the show description.

But it was a visualization of enjoying life and paring things down and having some simplicity, really being present for my life because I fear and I talk about in therapy all the time that for the past decade or more, maybe the past 20 years

possibly, I’ve been so focused on doing and going that I have often forgotten to be, to exist. And that’s my nature, I believe. I think it’s exacerbated a little bit by the career that I fell into, frankly. And also, that is my nature.

I am a doer. I like to be in motion. And I mean that metaphorically because I am also quite sedentary much of the time and I do get like, you know, sitting soreness.

Like my hip flexors are tight. Why? Because I’m always seated.

Like, girl, stand up. You are your own boss. Speaking of which, I’m my own boss.

Why haven’t I enjoyed my life? Why don’t I go and have lunch in the middle of the day with my husband, who’s a stay-at-home dad? Like, why, why, why?

So I scanned that image. It was the screen saver. I don’t know if people still say that on my desktop.

It was the lock screen on my phone. I framed it. It hangs up in the studio right inside the door.

So when I open it, I see it every day that I come to work. I see it every single day. And did I enjoy my life in 2024?

Yeah, I did. I did, not perfectly. You know, my kids were like, yeah, you did a good job.

And then, you know, one of my kids was like, ah, you know, I don’t know. But I did a much better job. I took a trip with my mom in Ireland.

We went to Ireland for 10 days. I was like, I’m not going to work on this trip, but I am going to bring a laptop because I do, I can’t control when I’m going to write and when it hits me.

And sometimes I can do it by hand, but I’m a typer, I’m a typer. And I’m learning to kind of accept that about myself too. Right?

It seems so much more literary. It seems so much more intelligent to be like, I actually write everything out longhand first. I heard several interviews with authors who do that.

And I’m like, who can hold a pen that long? Who’s got the tactile strength for that? Certainly not me.

So I did, I did enjoy this life. And a few examples of that were that I was offered a few projects. You know, my job is not just this podcast, which is good in a lot of ways, right?

Because if you’re self-employed, you really do have to have a diversity of income, or you will be very, very easily screwed. I could have been very, very easily, you know, many, many times over the past few years.

But I think the diversity of what I do has kind of saved me over and over again. And I went on that trip with my mom. I really did.

I wrote a little bit one day and that was it. Otherwise, I was just there with her. And we went on really long.

We drove all over that country and we went on long walks and we ate really good food. And yes, she got food poisoning. And yes, I thought she was going to die, but she didn’t.

But she didn’t. And I kicked off 2024 by getting this offer, a project offer to get back to that. And it was something that was so good on paper.

And with every inch that I got closer, I realized this is a nightmare situation with a nightmare person. And I cannot spend my one wild and precious life participating in whatever this is going to be just for, you know, just for a check.

And it became increasingly evident that, you know, they didn’t even really want to pay me for it, which is also something that… sometimes the better things look from the outside.

And this is something I don’t hear a lot of people talking about publicly, but we all say it. The better something that looks from the outside, right? The fancier, the more impressive.

Probably the less lucrative it is. Probably the less actually beneficial it is to you as a participant is something that I’ve learned over the years. So, I almost said yes to that, but I knew in my heart, I was like, I can’t do this.

I have to say no. I have to say no. And I had a conversation with my friend Carolyn, she was like, does it sound like you will enjoy this life if you do that?

And I was like, no, it won’t. And there was my answer. So having a key theme for the year really did help guide me.

And I don’t think that was the board manifesting something but that was the board doing its job, which is like reminding me of the vision that I wanted for my life. You know, I really wanted to do things that kept me present.

And part of that was taking on less. And that is also very, very hard for me to do. So when I am making these mood boards or these vision boards, and I do them kind of whenever I feel like I need, and like I have the yearly one, right?

And that’s like the big picture, but I’ll make one for a month or for a quarter if I kind of feel like I really want to focus in and remind myself of the most important thing for a finite amount of time. That kind of ladders up to that bigger vision.

I ask myself, what is the energy that you want? Like what is the feeling that you want from this period of time? I hope you couldn’t just hear my stomach grumbling.

And are there words that represent this? Are there images that represent this? I have made digital versions of a mood board or a vision board, you know, kind of just pulling things off of social media.

Sometimes I’ll print them on my home printer and then paste them. I rip apart old books and old magazines. I go to thrift stores and junk stores and buy really kind of anything that’s paper.

I use little scraps that I’ve found or that have meaning for me. And I put together a board based on that. Sometimes there’s like a main character who represents what that could feel like or what that would look like.

Sometimes those have been pictures of people who are in my life because that is my focus for the month or for this quarter.

So I don’t take it too prescriptively, but it is a exercise in identifying for myself what matters and then really visualizing that and making sure that I have a visual of what that is.

So, you know, the vision board, this, I will enjoy this life definitely, I think guided me towards that change too, which is, I was not the only person burned out. This job has burned out several people.

And, you know, I thank them for their sacrifice. And it also probably shouldn’t have been a sacrifice that any of us had to make, except that we only ever know what we know in the moment. And we do our best with the information we have.

And I don’t regret it, or maybe I do depending on the day, but I also don’t. Everything gets me, gets all of us to, like, the next thing. You know, nobody died.

So maybe that’s the wrong standard to have. But that was my touchstone for 2024, is I will enjoy this life. I will enjoy this life.

So, we’re on this hiatus through most of 2024, and I am still feeling pretty burned out because I am still obviously working. We’re still making two episodes a month. I’m still, you know, also writing a substack.

I, you know, write other things on the side. I have other jobs like that.

And I saw a, I saw a, I listened to a podcast episode of Two Niche, T-O-O-N-I-C-H-E, Two Niche, with Elizabeth Kott, and she was talking about The Artist’s Way, which is a book that I have bought and donated, I would say approximately seven or eight

times over the course of my adult life. I think part of The Artist’s Way is buying The Artist’s Way and then never doing it, and then donating it, and then buying it again and saying that you’re going to do it.

But it’s a 12-week creative program, and the book was written in 1992, perhaps, so it’s a little bit older, and there are elements of it that definitely do feel dated, but I also enjoyed those.

The idea of it is that you go through week by week, and there are prompts, there are activities. One of the activities is that you take yourself alone on an artist date once a week. Maybe that’s a walk.

Maybe that’s a day trip somewhere. Maybe that’s to, you know, Goodwill. My artist dates are almost always to Goodwill, because I just love thrifting, and it just makes me feel like a kid again, like treasure hunting.

And a part of that program, too, is something called morning pages, where right when you wake up, you write three pages longhand, just brain dump, whatever, whatever is in your head, it comes out. It is basically like clearing out all of the gunk.

I always struggled with this. This is actually where I stopped the artist way every time I started it, because I didn’t want to wake up and write three pages longhand. And also, I was so ready for it to be perfect.

You know, I was like, well, what should I write? It should be deeply meaningful. It should be…

You can literally write. I don’t know what to write. I’m sitting at a table.

My hand hurts. I have a cup of coffee. It’s anything.

It’s just you get things out of your brain. You get your brain and body connected, and you just go. You don’t self-edit.

Very hard for me. And you just go and you get it done. I don’t know why, but this time, it stuck.

Honestly, I do know why. It’s because I befriended Elizabeth Kott, and I’ve followed along with some of her other posts about the artist’s way. She runs artist’s way groups that I will do at some point.

And this is not like an exhaustive explanation of the artist’s way by any means. And if there’s interest, I can, you know, go a little bit deeper into that at some point. But I did do the morning pages.

Part of it is that for several weeks, you don’t look at your morning pages. You don’t show them to anybody else. It is a solitary journey through your own brain and your psyche.

And I, so I just wrote them. I wrote them. I wrote them.

And tell the week, and I can’t remember which week it is, where you go through them. And you go through them with several highlighters, and you start to notice themes. And the theme was pretty clear, which was that I needed to stop doing TTFA.

And that was really scary for me. I floated that idea before at various times, and it also, I just felt so much resistance to it before.

When the, you know, idea had come up, there was an era where I was not sure that I would be able to leave the organization that I was with and bring Terrible, Thanks For Asking with me, and I might have had to walk away from it, and that definitely

did not feel right at the time, right? To leave it behind, but to close something on my own terms when it belongs to me is quite different and feels quite different.

And when I looked at that, really looked at it, it became clear that that was that was a part of the creative block that I was experiencing was having sort of built this career that I love so much in building this framework and building the show

where there was a specific expectation around what I would cover, how I would talk about it, how I would produce it, who I would be publicly, and it just didn’t fit anymore. And that’s scary. Changes, scary. And it’s also really, really exhilarating.

I think the best things that have ever happened in my life came from times when I literally just burned it all down and started over. And I really don’t think that’s, you know, to the same extent that I’ve done it in the past.

But, you know, I met Erin and fell in love because I packed up all my stuff and left New York City and moved back home to Minneapolis and was like, okay, I’m going to just start my life over here in a place where I haven’t lived since I was 18.

And now I’m, you know, 27 and I’m going to just start over here.

And the podcast and the books only happened because I lost my husband and my father and a pregnancy and didn’t go to work anymore and therefore, like, kind of couldn’t get paid to do the job anymore.

And I left that job and I didn’t have an idea of, you know, kind of what I could do, but I could freelance right and I could do this and blah, blah, blah, and here we are, right here.

So those things are scary and they’re also, I think, where kind of the best stuff comes from. And even if it’s not the best stuff moving forward, I don’t want to put that kind of pressure on myself. It’s at least, you know, it’s a new adventure.

And I fully understand not everybody comes along for every adventure. That’s okay. I truly mean it.

I mean that I am so grateful for everybody who has ever listened to Terrible, Thanks For Asking, engaged with it in any way, who has found any meaning in this work. It is beyond a dream that I was ever able to do that.

And, you know, like I said, it’s not as though I’m never going to talk about terrible things ever again, but it’s just not going to be the center of my work and the center of my world anymore. And I think that is healthy, for me at least.

Another thing that got me to this place was lists, making a lot of lists, making a lot of lists.

And I have had a few other people who are, I’d say like peers in the industries that I’m in, do these exercises as well, and they also found them very helpful. This might be a little too niche to borrow from Elizabeth Kott.

This might be a little too directed at people who are maybe self-employed, but I actually do think that there are applications that would work for kind of no matter what you do, if that makes sense. So I did this one several times.

I made a list, titled it 2024, and I listed out every single thing that I did in 2024. I put them into buckets according to like, you know, what part of my career they belong to or what part of my personal life they belong to.

But some of these were one-off events. Some of these were, you know, recurring tasks or recurring jobs or recurring events that I had committed to. And the list was quite long.

The list was quite long. And then I went through that list, and I trimmed it down. I trimmed it down.

Now, there’s different criteria for everybody, but one that we use here at Feelings & Co with our team was coined by Marcel Malekibu. And I love a Venn diagram.

I like to say that to move forward with something as a new idea, as a person who has a lot of new ideas, who’s always ready to chase a new idea, it’s got to meet two of the three criteria. And I used to say, does it make me happy?

Does it make me better? And by better, I mean, like, it’s just good for me, or it’s good for the world, or it gets me somewhere that I wouldn’t have gone before, which is what some of those, you know, shinier things that don’t make money tend to do.

Or does it make me money, right? And it’s got to be one of the three, when it comes to a professional obligation, to take me away from my family. So Marcel made it alliterative, which is even better, which is, do we have the power?

Like, can we really do it? Can you really do this thing? Do you have the passion?

Do you really want to do this thing? And will it make a profit? The third one might not apply, might not apply to everybody.

And it certainly doesn’t, you know, like my children are not ever going to make me a profit, but I do love them. And going to have lunch at their school, like does make me happy and does make me better. And that is worth doing.

But when I was looking at all of the professional obligations and even some of the personal ones that I, you know, that are optional, that I don’t have to do, I was really, really ruthless.

Not the first time I went through the list, but maybe the second time, the third time. And even when I moved things over to 2025 and that list was shorter, it’s still a big list. It’s still a lot.

I have learned and must relearn all the time that I can do anything, but I can’t do everything. And nor should I. Nor should I.

Just because I can do something does not mean that I ought to do it, that I have to do it, that I, you know, that it’s even a good idea for me to do it.

I used to look at, you know, my calendar, and if there was like any space, I would think like, wow, I’m just like not that busy. And now I look at my calendar and I see space, and I’m like, that’s, that’s, that’s what you need. That’s what you need.

That’s what we all need. Everybody needs a little bit of white space. Like, that’s when I read, that’s when I interact with the world, that’s when I find things to be interested in that can show up in my work.

And of course, that is a privilege. And of course, I think everybody in the world is running on fumes right now and feels like over scheduled and pulled to the max.

And if that exercise is helpful for you, and I hope it is, I hope it does help you get a little bit of white space, a little bit of extra breathing room, because you do deserve that. You deserve that. So I made that list.

I just kind of knew, I kind of knew, told the team, told the people who help us get advertisers, like it’s gotta be a big change and this is what it’s going to be. And it is scary, but mostly it’s exciting.

So the 2025 Vision Board came together again on December 31st. I sat down at the studio, got the party room here at the building and had tons of old books, old picture books, like coffee table books, tons of magazines, tons of glue.

I did not have a poem theme for this year. I really did not have anything specific coming into this year other than what I already knew from all the other, from my morning pages and from the lists and from last year’s Vision Board.

I knew I wanted more of that. And so I’m ripping apart magazines and it’s coming together. And this is the year of less.

This is the year of no, this is the year of not taking on more just because I technically have space in my calendar. This is the year of calling my friends on the phone.

It is the year of enjoying my life even more, which I understand is not a case of less, but I believe in this instance that’s okay to have that kind of contradiction.

And there’s a picture of that vision board as well on the Substack for your viewing pleasure. But I’m excited about it. I’m very excited about it.

And it feels really good to me. And I did the same things. I asked myself and I asked everybody else who’s making their vision board for the year, like, what do you want to feel this year?

If there’s a specific goal, you know, find a way to visualize that. Is there a specific character who embodies this energy?

And there are a few people, like actual people who are on my vision board that I wasn’t planning to, but I did just, you know, I just kind of happened to see them while I was putting my stuff together.

And one is Phoebe Waller-Bridge because she’s creative, she’s hilarious, she’s a writer, she just kind of does her thing and then goes away and then does her thing again. And I love that.

Diane Von Furstenberg because, you know, what’s simpler than a wrap dress and doing something and doing it well? Diane Keaton because, my God, what to maintain the same personal style for 50 years is really an impressive thing.

And the word no is on there really hugely. It’s really beautiful. I really love it.

It’s my lock screen. It is my computer screensaver. And again, it is framed in my in my studio first thing when I walk in.

So final thing that I said I would talk about on on Substack is a way to honor the year that was.

There is something that my family does on December 31st, though I think it is not too late for you to do it right now because guess what season it is right now. It’s award season right now, and it’s award season even in my household.

Every year, and by the way, we’ve done this two years in a row, so now I can say every year, my family gets together on December 31st, and we have our family awards ceremony.

We all sit down, all the kids, everyone, my mom, my husband, Caroline has flown in, Caroline Moss has flown in two years in a row for this, and for my birthday, which is also, by the way, I don’t know if I would be as likely to do all of this

self-reflection at the end of the year if my birthday was not also at the end of December. I am hit with this sort of double whammy of New Year’s, like I am turning over a new year for myself as the world is turning over a new year, and that is

annoying. I’m so jealous of people who were born in July or June or even September, you know, who can be like, oh, I’m gonna start over right now.

Even though you can start over at any point in time, you can do this at any point in time, I have to remind myself that that is another reason why I sometimes do monthly vision boards or quarterly vision boards as a reminder, like anything can be a

fresh start. This moment can be a fresh start, but we’re talking about acknowledging the year that was.

And we do these family awards so I can make sure that the people I love know that I see them, I see not just what they have done, but who they are.

I give a little, you know, talk about what their year has been like, what they have been through, what they have accomplished, what we are proud of them for. And then I make up an award name and I spend weeks, months creating the awards.

I’m really into cross-stitch and embroidery lately, so they’ve been embroidered awards that I then frame, little tiny cheap frames filled with an embroidered phrase that I’ve given them. This year, there was an accompanying PowerPoint.

That was a hit.

And then, in a surprise turn of events, my mom gave me an award because last year, as the emcee and the creator of the awards, I didn’t get an award because that was not the point, but this year, my mom conspired with my husband and they gave me an

award at the end. And it is also embroidered. It’s an embroidery hoop on reclaimed fabric. My mother embroidered Less Is More.

I got that hours after I had made this vision board. Hours after. There’s no way that months before she could have known that that’s what my vision board was going to look like.

So, you know, I don’t believe in signs. I believe, or I do believe in signs. You know, I don’t believe in coincidence.

I don’t believe in coincidence. I believe in signs. I think that’s a sign from the universe that it’s working.

It’s already working. So, family awards are something we do December 31st. I think anybody could do them at any point in time.

I think it would be a fun thing to do with a group of friends, with your, you know, with your kids, with your husband, with, you know, your partner, with whoever, whoever is important to you to get together and mark a year or a period of time by

celebrating what was so special about the year for everybody. So, the awards are personal, so I’m not going to say what everybody’s award was, aside from mine, but they’re given the award to mark the accomplishments of the last year, and not just

like, it’s not just like the things that went well either, it’s like the things that you survived, the things you got through, and something that really represents who you are. And then I give them a wish for themselves for the next year.

And finally, the final thing that we do as a family for the new year, but again, you could do this anytime because there’s nothing special about a new year except for the way that we decide that it is special, which we should feel free to do at any

point in time for anything, is I ask everybody in my family three questions, and I give them space to write this down. I say, actually, it’s two questions. Look, I don’t know. I say, here are the prompts.

How about this? I give them three prompts. I say, in this new year, I want more of, and I have them think about what they want more of.

I want less of, and you can support me by. So those are the three prompts. What do you want more of?

What do you want less of? And how can we support you? Because I have often felt like if I set a goal or an intention or a vision, that it is on only me to make it happen.

And that is just a reflection of an individualistic culture. And I don’t want to perpetuate that with my kids, with my family. I want my kids to know like life is a team sport, and it’s okay to need each other.

And it’s really, really lovely and very, very insightful to see what is important to them. And to give them the chance to say like what they need. And not just for kids, but for, you know, adults too.

I was really, really surprised at the things that my husband said, at the things that, you know, Caroline Moss, my best friend, said that our friend Beth, who’s like a bonus grandma to our kids, at things she said, that my mom said, like it’s really,

really insightful. And we don’t always get enough time to think about those kinds of things. And I’m actually thinking right now, like maybe that’s something that I should do a little bit more often.

Maybe those are three prompts that I should be giving my family a little bit more often than just the new year. So in conclusion, Family Awards Night, it’s great. Make it your own.

Do whatever, the three prompts. I want more, I want less. This is how you can support me.

Make a vision board. If you want to not call it a vision board, that is fine. I am concluding, by the way, to go back briefly to The Artist’s Way.

It’s a 12 week program that I took about 20-ish, maybe more weeks to complete because there were weeks where all I got done were morning pages and I wanted to take the time and do the other activities.

And so I’m literally on, I’ve been on week 12 for like two weeks because there’s like two remaining activities that I just haven’t done and I think that’s fine. And there are parts of it that won’t be relevant to you and I think that’s also fine.

And there are parts of it that will be highly relevant to people and that’s fine. It’s not supposed to be like, you must do this. It’s really about like awakening the self that you might have forgotten or abandoned.

So, that’s where we’re at for the future. This is a little bit of a surprise episode, a little bit of a bonus episode. We will be back with new episodes on January 14th.

And again, there will be a little bit of a preview here on the main feeds for people. But the full episodes will be available only on Substack. That’s noraborialis.substack.com.

We’ll be putting out at least two episodes of the podcast. I write weekly essays. The full archive of Terrible, Thanks For Asking is there.

That kind of support is not in the cards for you. I get it. I get it.

I’m excited. I’m excited to be here. I’m grateful for all of you, for all of the time that you have spent with us over the past few years.

I’m excited about the future. And yeah, I think that’s it. I think that’s it.

There’s links to everything that we discussed in the show description. And oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. And if there’s anything that you want to talk about on this new version of the podcast, anything at all, you can call or text 612-568-4441.

I can’t wait to talk to you guys. I can’t wait to hear your voices and bring you this new era. I’m Nora McInerny.

Thanks For Asking. Thanks For Asking is a production of Feelings & Co. Our team here is Marcel Malekibu, Grace Berry, and Claire McInerny.

This episode was mixed by Marcel Malekibu. And what else was I going to say? Oh, our theme music.

We actually have new theme music just for today. The theme music that you’re hearing right now is by my eight-year-old Q, my eight-year-old son Q, my young son Q.

I can’t remember how he wanted to be credited, but he wanted to be called my son, my youngest son Q. He made this, he’s entered his garage band era of life. It feels a little premature, he’s only eight, but we are in the garage band mode.

He will be a SoundCloud rapper any day now. He made this song just for us and you will like it or else. Special thanks to our supporting producers over on Substack.

That’s Melody Swinford, Erin Glan, Amy Gabriel, Gabrielle, please let me know. Lauren Hanna, Caroline Moss, Sarah David, Ella, oh gosh Ella, I think part of your last name is in Cyrillic in this export, I’m gonna have to email you.

Callie Sakai, Crystal, Jen Grimlin, Dave Gilmore, Kate Lyon, Jennifer Pavelka, Nicole Petey, Larry Lefferts, Diane C, Shannon Dominguez-Stevens, Chelsea Cernick, Christina, Rachel Walton, Joe Theodosopoulos, Jeremy Essen, Chiara, Kathy Hamm, Lizzie

DeVries, Jill McDonald, Micah, Laura Savoy, Beth Lippem, Katie, Anna Brzezinski, Jessica Reed, Michelle Thomas, Veal Bassie, Elise Lunen, Stacey Wilson, Elizabeth Berkley, Car Pan, Abby Arrows, Amanda, Bonnie Robinson, Kim F., Anne H., Mary Beth

Berry, Robin Roulard, Alexis Lane, Jessica Letexier. That’s a beautiful name and I hope I’m not butchering it. Lindsay Lund, Kate Balorjohn, Courtney McCowen, Faye Barons, Inga, Monica, Madeline McGrane, Penny Pesta, Crystal Mann, Jess Blackwell,

Lisa Piven, Renee Kepke, Joy Pollack, Val, Celia Doucet, David Binkley, Jennifer McDaigle, Sarah Garifaux, Sarah M. Garifaux. We literally couldn’t do it without you. Thank you so much.