✨Im Literary Anxious✨

Estimated Reading Time🕒: 7 minutes

You’re probably thinking, “Nat, it hasn’t even been 24 hours,” and you’d be right. Still, the New Year has a way of kicking off more than just resolutions—it stirs up questions about where we’ve been and want to go.

Truthfully, my year hasn’t looked too bad so far:

• I woke up to no cotton mouth or headache after drinking an entire bottle of Prosecco solo—a New Year’s Day miracle. 🍾
• Cinnamon rolls and bacon—breakfast of champions. 🥓
• Clear sky and a cool 70 degrees outside—trust me, in FL, this is a win. 😏

However, I wouldn’t be me if my mind wasn’t already running 10 steps ahead. I know—for a fact—that 2025 is going to be a struggle, and I have no one to pin that on but myself.

After all, I’m the one who decided to “challenge” myself in 2025, and as my therapist so gently put it: “That shit is hard.”

They say accountability is essential when sticking to your goals, so here I am, sharing mine for the year:

• Be Present
• Be Determined
• Be Vulnerable

If you’re wondering what the hell that means…

Be Present: I love reading; I’m a book and words girlie through and through, but I’m better at escaping into books than living my life. And while saying I read a library’s worth of books when I die is a great flex, I’d like to have a bit more than a page count to brag about (or for my loved ones to brag about since I’d be, you know, dead and all.)

Be Determined: I’ve always been resolute in whatever I set my mind to at the time; recently, though, my follow-through has wavered. There always seems to be “too much”—too much to do, going on, coming up—and it tends to overwhelm to the point of paralysis. I want to once again practice being unrelenting by:

A. Completing/passing the persuasive copywriting certification course I’m working on.

B. Finishing the first draft of my manuscript.

Words have been both my greatest ally and my most ruthless enemy. Perfectionism paralysis has gripped me by the throat when it comes to writing, and I’m determined to beat it this year. I will have a first draft completed by the end of 2025, and if it’s a flaming pile of garbage, I will still celebrate because, goddamned, I did the thing I set out to do.

That leaves us with…

Be Vulnerable: And this is where shit gets hard.

I’ve always been an ambivert; I have no trouble putting myself out there… mildly. However, being 100% transparent? I’m confident that only around three people have been privy to that, and one of them is my therapist (does it count if you’re paying them? No offense Leonie, in case you’re reading this 😅).

My life path has been… uncommon. And while now it’s easy to see I’ve always had some level of neurodivergence, it wasn’t until my mid-twenties that I actively started better understanding what makes me tic (I wish I could say it was because I wanted to better myself, but honestly my world was on fire and I didn’t have an extinguisher).

It wasn’t until I was 34 that I officially got diagnosed with GED (Generalized Anxiety Disorder) and OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder). It wasn’t until a few weeks ago that I got the results from a more in-depth examination, which affirmed those diagnoses and identified ADHD, SID (Sensory integration disorder), and Panic disorder, along with recommendations for some further testing to understand some unclear potential diagnoses better.

Trust me, I wasn’t trying to collect neurospicy traits like Pokémon—but here I am, seeing myself through this new lens, and suddenly so much makes sense.

And that’s what vulnerability has to do with it—opening up about my experiences feels necessary not just for growth, but for connection. I want my content and writing to be more than witty reviews and clever comments (as fun and satisfying as those may be). I want to share my experiences living with and learning from my neurodivergence—not only because I think it will directly benefit my relationships but because I hope to see a day when neurodivergence is as seamlessly accepted as any other lifelong condition—so common and understood that no one thinks twice when it comes up in conversation.

Here’s the catch, though: my brain loves to make me question everything—including whether I’m “sick” enough or “fucked up” enough to share any part of my experiences beyond re-sharing a few memes or reels.

I function, right? I’m a grown, successful adult with a home, a healthy relationship, and a career I enjoy. What could be challenging enough about my life to make me feel qualified to share my thoughts and experiences? But that’s the thing—we don’t need to be qualified or meet some arbitrary level of struggle to make our stories worth sharing. I’ve never—not once—been fully transparent, not in life and not in my art. I’ve always worried that my words or my truth might hurt someone I care about.

And that’s what being vulnerable as a goal comes down to. I want need to put myself out there for the next step of my journey to be of any significant growth. Otherwise, I’d be working on myself but always keeping certain things at the surface level. While that may ensure I never upset anyone around me, it’ll do me, myself, and I zero favors.

And that’s the direction I want to take with both this blog and my Bookstagram (@Im_literary_anxious). While bookish content will remain front and center, you may notice more personal reflections sprinkled in.

The internet is notorious for not always being kind, and I am terrified of putting myself out there. But I’m an aspiring author, and that means embracing rejection and feedback—right?

Perhaps 2025 won’t be so much a struggle as it will be a climb.

If you’ve ever wrestled with sharing your own story, I’d love to hear how you’ve embraced vulnerability—or what’s holding you back. Let’s tackle 2025 together.