Phew. It’s been a moment, hasn’t it?

When I hit publish on my last post of 2024, I had every intention of being back again come the new year. Then, the new year came… and I went a bit (or quite a bit…) silent.

Well, I have to say that I’m beyond thrilled to be “back” in the many iterations of the word, and I can’t wait to dive into what I was up to and where I’m going.

Let’s do this.

My Dance with Rest:

Back in November, when this new rebranding of The Joyfilled Seeker went live, I felt (rather appropriately!) alive again in many, many ways.

I took a long sabbatical from this space while it underwent a whole new rebranding and new website. And I felt ready to come back. Ready to go. Ready for this new chapter.

Imagine my deep surprise when the new year came along. The decorations from the holidays were boxed up, the world outside had that fresh new snow feeling (both physically and mentally), and it had all the feelings of something new brewing-like a great cup of tea.

However, deep within me, I wasn’t there. Not by a long shot.

Recognizing the Signs for a Rest Period:

I usually love a January. I love how it feels like a whole fresh new journal. Like starting the first chapter of a brand new book.

However, this January… that felt lacking a bit.

I felt, above everything else… tired and uninspired.

I’m not entirely sure where it came from. Perhaps it was just some grief exhaustion from my dad’s death in 2024 coming to the surface. Maybe it was just an “up-leveling” on the soul and a shedding of the old to make room for the new. Or it could have been a deep sense of fear of entering some uncharted waters with this new evolution of The Joyfilled Seeker.

Although, if I’m being completely honest, it was probably a mixture of those three (and so many other factors I’m not even aware of).

Being an empathic person, I’m pretty tuned in with my own emotions. And I’m able to tell when things just aren’t flowing. So, it was honestly pretty easy for me to label the need for a reset and rest (especially after being here before!).

Prioritizing Resting

While identifying the need to truly engage in a habit of rest felt relatively easy…. doing so was more complicated.

We live in a society that loves productivity. It loves hustle. It loves to label whether a day was “good” or not by how much we got “done”.

And when I felt called to do nothing… it really caused some struggle within my mind. Old belief systems really came raging up, and they needed to be addressed.

I’m such a gut person–always have been– and I knew that if I tried to push through this… it wasn’t for the highest and best outcome. It would have left me feeling even worse down the road.

So, I knew I needed to keep resting. Keep practicing doing nothing, even though my mind was having some tantrums about it.

Beyond the Surface: What I Discovered During My Time Away

The Importance of Intentional Rest + Why Rest is Very “Productive”:

One of the core guideposts for living a life wholeheartedly is playing and resting, according to Brené Brown’s book, The Gifts of Imperfection.

And yet, “Making the choice to rest and play is, at best, counterculture,” Brown writes.

And boy, oh, boy did I feel that these past few months.

One of the biggest lessons I learned during this period of resting was that 1.) Rest is part of the natural cycle of things and 2.) Rest, in and of itself, is very productive.

Firstly, rest is part of the cyclical nature of life. By pure happenstance (and perhaps a little wee bit of magic), I signed up for Kaileen Elise’s A Year of Calm course back in December. After wanting to for a couple years now, I finally felt the full-body calling to sign-up–and it could not have been more aligned with the stars.

A big focus of the course is living with the seasons. Not only the seasons in life, but the seasons of our world. Winter, I’ve really come to learn, is all about resting. It’s about going inwards.

Just take a glimpse outside and you see the season itself go inwards–trees are bare, the temperatures usher us inside and snow can leave us staying in rather than going out. And, where I currently am, winter was really winter-ing this year thus making all this feel ever more true.

So, when my mind, body and spirit felt called to rest, I took some great comfort in knowing that this is just part of the cycle of the year. And I will feel inspired and action ready again. I just had to ride the waves of the rest.

Another thing I learned in this season of resting, rest is extremely productive. Resting really taught me a lot… honestly more than seasons of a lot of action have.

Namely, it taught me to take a really deep look at everything.

Questions like whether I wanted to keep doing The Joyfilled Seeker, what I want TJS to look and sound like, what boundaries I need in my life, how I feel about social media, what my true dreams are for this space and for my personal life…what really is joy to me… all needed to be looked at. And were during this period of rest.

Rather interestingly, I also found myself feeling bursts of aligned action. I found myself re-falling in love with travel as I made a trip out Southwest, gaining a greater consistency of practicing meditation again (’tis a journey!), learning from Dr. Joe Dispenza in a course, practicing watercolor painting from Emily Lex, reigniting my movement routines (I’ve really become a strength workout lover!) and really taking some time to get the inside more aligned within myself.

So, was this rest season unproductive? Looking back on everything I “did”, I wouldn’t say so! By allowing myself to take the time to slow down, I still grew in really deep ways. And- now I am entering a period of more action again- I don’t feel I could have ever felt quite so aligned if I hadn’t taken the time to “do nothing.”

Rediscovering my Creativity and Passion

Perhaps the greatest gift of this rest season: I feel inspired again. I feel creative again. And my passion feels as though it has thawed along with the wintery outdoors.

Much like the scenes of birds chirping and swooping into the bird feeder, the daffodils slowly making their grand entrance (albeit a bit fashionably late for my liking) and the horses galloping with a new energy unfolding outside my window, I feel as though I have entered a spring of the soul, body and mind.

One that feels exciting, looking forwards, and truly alive once again.

And oh is it so very welcome.

Reimagining and Reconnecting Again: What’s Coming Next?

New Intentions

During the questioning-of-all-things stage of my rest, one of the biggest things I questioned was the future of this space.

This is such a sacred place for me. It came to me when I needed it the most in life. And as a result, I feel quite protective of it.

However, I’ve learned that it’s also a space that grows and expands all on its own. What this site was in 2021 isn’t the same site it is in 2025.

And that’s beautiful.

As this space moves towards a new evolution, it just felt fitting that it comes along with new intentions.

So, here they are.

1.) This space is joy overarching, not joy specific: The content of this space is… and will always be… about living a life of joy. Whatever that looks like. However, I don’t want to limit myself to only talking about specific topics or ideas simply because they aren’t directly related to joy. I still love meditation, books and quotes, but there are other things I want to share with the hopes it, perhaps, might add joy to your own life. So, joy’s overarching here, but it might not hit you on the head, if that makes sense?

2.) Authentic joy is first priority: After taking a deep look at my own well-being these past few months, I saw that part of what was causing the exhaustion I was feeling was how inauthentic things were feeling here and over on social media. I hated feeling like I had to post a picture of things just because that’s what people say you need to do on Instagram, in particular. I love photography, but the feeling of “needing” to post something left me despising it. So, I took this as a sign that things had to change. No more hard deadlines on posting content. I going to practice living a joyful life, and share from that place of joy–if it aligns to do so. It’s my hope that this authenticity will be felt through the content–and that’s really where the good stuff is, I believe.

3.) Breaking Down the Seasons: Between taking Kaileen’s course and following Lydia Millen, I have really come to have a deep love for the seasons. And I truly feel like this will present itself more in my content in some shape or form. It already was starting to a bit here and there on Instagram. There’s something so glorious about a fresh open-window spring day, a summer thunderstorm, an earthy-smelling fall morning and a brilliant sunset sky in the winter… and I want to talk about it more.

To Conclude…Embrace the Unknown

One of the great joys of life is change (and if you would have met me 10-15 years ago, you would probably not believe I would say such a thing. Such a creature of comfort I was!).

Change is life. Being alive=changing. Every day, every second we are evolving towards the next iteration of ourselves. And that is a thing of beauty. Much like aging, every evolution finds us feeling a little more like “who we really are.”

And that feeling… well, it’s hard to trade that for anything.

Part of the process of changing is that it’s unknown. What will the next change be? How will I evolve next?

It can either be daunting… or it can be exciting. I choose exciting.

Embracing that unknown with a gigantic hug, knowing and trusting it has our back… always. That’s how I choose to live.

And if that great unknown has you feeling and leaning into a rest period… of stillness… remember it’s a radical thing to really embrace that. But, you will come out even better in doing so.