2025 Reflections: The Year My Anxiety Spiked

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Welcome back to My Jamaican Vignettes. As we wind down 2025, I wanted to dedicate a post to some reflections, personal as well as what I hoped to achieve with My Jamaican Vignettes in 2025.

I, like most of us started 2025 with so much hope and promise. But now it feels like the year knocked me on my ass. Yet as we near the close of 2025 I feel more aligned and I have more clarity.

2025 Reflections

The thing that is most prominent in my mind as I write this post is the aftermath of Hurricane Melissa. I feel heartbroken for my fellow Jamaicans and I am worried about our national economy and growth forecast.

But let’s roll things back to what I initially hoped and dreamed up for 2025.

Career

At the beginning of the year, I’d hope for a career pivot. I felt stuck in my role as editor and wanted a new challenge. Boy did the current job market humble me in 2025. Now I haven’t applied for hundreds of jobs like many job hunters have stated elsewhere on the internet. However, I have experienced being ghosted, I experienced long rounds of interview, weeks and months of silence followed by rejection. Without jinxing things I hoping that 2026 is a year of growth, abundance and expansion.

Relationships

In 2025, I decided to actively nurture and pour into my relationships outside of my romantic partnership. And I feel like I did. I saw and spoke with my family and friends more. I spent quality time with my sisters and mother and nephew and aunt in summer. I spent time with my dad and his partner and my uncles, aunts and cousins. I got to hang out with my godsons and my best friend and that felt great.

My partner and I have a bond and we have a shared connection that is solid but I felt that my other relationships needed some extra effort and I am thankful.

My Jamaican Vignettes Growth

I had big dreams for growing MJV this year but that didn’t happen. I envisioned growth on IG (aka more followers) and I dreamed up collaborations and monetizing the blog. But I am happy that I kept showing up and writing even when things got hard.

Time to focus on my own community instead of social metrics even though likes and shares and comments do a little something to my brain. But in 2026, I am building little by little and I am dusting off that subscriber sign up form and rebuilding my mailing list and nurturing it, no European spam bots are invited. Watch this space for the relaunch of the monthly newsletter.

I do want to shout out Jennifer Scott for reaching out and asking to be a guest writer on MJV. And I want to thank my friends Kimmi and Marsha-Gay for reading every post and commenting.

Thanks to my friends, colleagues that follow MJV on IG or Facebook and have liked, commented or shared a post. This means the world to me.

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Come back next week for a bonus post where I will share my 2026 blog plans. I am excited about this space and I hope you will continue journeying with me along this ride.

Be well. Chat again soon.

In cased you missed it, here is one of my favourite articles from 2025:

Feeling Nostalgic and Missing Print Magazines

Thanks for reading!