The Year of Less: Vision Boards, Awards, What’s Next in 2025
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Hi guys, it's Nora. If you like what we've done here on Terrible Thanks for Asking, you might want to check out our YouTube channel. We have two new videos going up every week over at youtube.com slash at feelings and co that's feelings and co there's a link to it in our show description. So see over on YouTube, if that's what you're into, what a sales gal I am.

Only on Peacock.

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 McInerney, 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 that

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, and

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, in 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 and they're out there somewhere. I don't think that I've met them. It was an honor to make it. It has been. It has also been...

you know, 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 sub stack. It's just time for a change. Yeah.

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. And 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 from me and then do that. And I really have felt very lost for a number of years while also feeling like

you know, grateful and also feeling burned out and also feeling excited at times and also feeling, you know, 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.

Um, and you know, not just because, you know, 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

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 sub stack for subscribers. New episodes of Thanks for Asking in their entirety will be on the sub stack 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 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 videos.

episodes or videos up a week. 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 me

podcasts that things have changed when you hear those sort of 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. You know, I don't like, 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, uh, but, but I don't like that. I don't like that. Um,

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 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 do it. 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 excited about a new creative challenge and I'm excited to make things, make things again. And 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 sub stack, I will be putting a

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.

We get support from Rosetta Stone. This Christmas, give the gift that truly keeps on giving, which is a lifetime membership to Rosetta Stone. This is perfect for anyone who is looking to learn or improve their language skills, including my kid who is obsessed with languages right now. This kid wants to learn Russian.

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We get support from Thrive Market. It is early January as I'm recording this. We just had all of our guests leave and the crash has begun. The crash of post-holiday. We were in a

a feral household this holiday season. I would love to say that was just the kids, but it was all of us. We went absolutely bananas. And by that, I mean, we did not eat a single banana, not one single food that could be classified as, you know, an actual food. It was cookies and

And candy from here to eternity. That's the, it was sugar, sugar, sugar, sugar, sugar with a little bit of sugar. Candy for breakfast, fine. I don't care. Cake for breakfast, even better. We're getting our lives together this year. We are starting now. I am very grateful for Thrive Market. I have been a Thrive Market member, customer, fan for years. I'm a Thrive Market fan.

There's a few features that I love. One is the healthy swap scanner. It's in the Thrive Market app. You can scan something that you love or that your kids love, you know, their favorite chips, their favorite crackers, and you can scan

Thrive will show you cleaner, healthier alternatives. That makes, it makes life easier. It introduces the kids and me to new options. But one of my favorite features is that

Thrive Market has filters on their site that make it absolutely simple to shop, buy your family's dietary needs. And we are a high-needs family. Two of us are celiac. One of us is lactose intolerant. Three of them are normal. Good for them, must be nice. But we can use those filters to find the best options for us.

If you are gluten-free or dairy-free, these are the two things that I can speak to the most. And specifically, if you are like, okay, I want a good, decent, gluten-free pasta. That's hard. Thrive Market. I'm telling you, go to Thrive Market. And everything is delivered straight to my door. I'm not searching the grocery aisles. I'm not going to five or six different grocery stores to try to get all of these things delivered.

It just comes right to my door. So if you are ready to thrive in 2025, head to thrivemarket.com slash thanks. You will get 30% off your first order and a free $60 gift. That's T-H-R-I-V-E market.com slash thanks. Thrivemarket.com slash thanks.

Hi, it's Nora with a little bit of an update. Terrible Things for Asking is on an indefinite hiatus, which means that for the foreseeable future, you won't see new episodes in the main feed. But if you want to support the work that we've done, get access to our entire back catalog with no ads, you can do that by clicking on the link in the description.

You can join us on Patreon at patreon.com slash ttfa or on Apple+. We are still making two episodes a month.

for subscribers, which is a sustainable workload for us emotionally and financially. There are still plenty of episodes here for free on the main feed, so no pressure. But if you want to join a community of Terribles, come over to Patreon. And if you just want more Terrible, join on Apple+. December 31st, 2023.

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 keep...

keeping your eye on the prize. You steer where you stare and

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 shoulds 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

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 subs deck, you will see an image of this. I'll link it in the show description. But it was a visualization of enjoying life and enjoying

Pairing 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 is, 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 sitting soreness. My hip flexors are tight. Why? Because I'm always seated. 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 screensaver. 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...

Yeah, I did. I did. Not perfectly. My kids were like, "Yeah, you did a good job." And then one of my kids was like, "Ah, 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, I'm,

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 pick. 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, 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 I

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. Oh.

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, you know...

I had a conversation with my friend Caroline. 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. 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, 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, 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 matters.

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, 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. 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 sub stack. I, you know, write other things on the side. I have other jobs like that. And I, uh,

I listened to a podcast episode of Tuneesh, T-O-O-N-I-C-H-E, Tuneesh with Elizabeth Cott. 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.

And 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. Yeah.

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 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's 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. I was like, well, what should I write? It should be deeply meaningful. 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 your

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 work.

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 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 and 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 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've 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 feels quite different. And when I looked at that, really looked at it, it became clear that 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. Change is 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

I met Aaron 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 27 and I'm going to just start over here. And the podcast and the books only happened because I...

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, um,

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 I'm

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.

Hi guys, it's Nora. If you like what we've done here on Terrible Things for Asking, you might want to check out our YouTube channel. We have two new videos going up every week over at youtube.com slash at feelings and co. That's feelings and co. There's a link to it in our show description. So see over on YouTube if that's what you're into. What a sales gal I am.

Another thing that got me to this...

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, in, in, 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

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 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 recurring events.

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

I, I, 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 Malikibu. And, you know, I love a Venn diagram. I like to say that, you know, to move forward with something,

as like a new idea, as a person who has a lot of new ideas, who is 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 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...

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

The third one might not apply to everybody. And it certainly doesn't. My children are not ever going to make me a profit, but I do love them. And going to have lunch at their school 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 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 it's even a good idea for me to do it. I used to look at my calendar and if there was any space, I would think like, wow, I'm just not that busy. And now I look at my calendar and I see space and I'm like, 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 privileged.

running on fumes right now and feels like overscheduled 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, it's got to 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,

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 sub stack for your viewing pleasure. But I am a...

I'm, 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, I, I asked myself and I asked everybody else who was 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

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 what's simpler than a wrap dress and doing something and doing it well? Diane Keaton, because my God, 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 studio first thing when I walk in. So...

Final thing that I said I would talk about 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 years. 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 who can be like, oh, I'm going to 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've done, but who they are.

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

I'm really into cross-stitch and like embroidery lately. So they've been embroidered awards that I then frame, little tiny cheap frames, you know, filled with, you know, 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 MC 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. Um,

on like 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 kids, with your husband, with your partner, with whoever, whoever's 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 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 at, I don't know. I say, here are the prompts 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 and 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

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, the things she said that my mom said, like, it's, 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 weeks.

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've 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 January

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.

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 McInerney. Thanks for asking.

Thanks for Asking is a production of Feelings & Co. Our team here is Marcel Malakibu, Grace Berry, and Claire McInerney. This episode was mixed by Marcel Malakibu. 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 GarageBand era of life. It feels a little premature, he's only eight, but we are in the GarageBand era.

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, Aaron Glan, Amy Gabriel. Gabrielle, please let me know. Lauren Hanna, Caroline Moss, Sarah David, Ella. Oh gosh, Ella. I...

I think part of your last name is in Cyrillic in this export. I'm going to have to email you.

Kelly Sakai, Crystal, Jen Grimlin, Dave Gilmour, Kate Lyon, Jennifer Pavelka, Nicole Peedy, Larry Lefferts, Diane See, Shannon Dominguez-Stevens, Chelsea Cernich, Christina, Rachel Walton, Joe Theodosopoulos, Jeremy Essen, Kiara, Kathy Hamm, Lizzie DeVries, Jill McDonald, Micah, Laura Savoy, Beth Lippum,

Katie, Anne Dobrzynski, Jessica Reed, Michelle Thomas, Veal Bassey, Elise Lunen, Stacey Wilson, Elizabeth Berkley, Car Pan, Abby Arrows,

amanda bonnie robinson kim f ann h mary beth berry robin roulard alexis lane jessica latexier that's a beautiful name and i hope i'm not butchering it lindsay lund kate balerjean courtney mccowan faye barons inga monica madeline mcgrane

We literally couldn't do it without you. Thank you so much.

Hi guys, it's Nora. If you like what we've done here on Terrible Things for Asking, you might want to check out our YouTube channel. We have two new videos going up every week over at youtube.com slash at feelings and co. That's feelings and co. There's a link to it in our show description. So see over on YouTube if that's what you're into. What a sales gal I am.

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