2025 Bring In The New Year With Hope

Update: I’m adding an update to the article, because at the end of this article I shared a song by the California band Switchfoot called “Dare you to move.” It’s a song that I heard in my adolescents, but really haven’t kept up with the band since.

So after I posted the song I was scanning over their videos and saw one titled, “Story Behind the Song, ‘The Anthem of Hope.’” Apparently 7 years ago Jon Foreman (lead singer) made this video talking about hope as a resolution and it’s message is no less relevant to us today.

I’d never heard this song before, but what a coincidence that my New Year’s Resolution to “Dare to Hope” reminded me of this guy’s song from way back (“Dare you to move”), and then I find this video he made about their history of singing about hope…

“Hope is what drives us. Hope is what we want to be about…In many ways, hope cannot live when you have everything figured out. Hope is not the resolution, but the desire for the resolution. [We hope] that one day all things will be set right.” – Jon Foreman

How cool is that?? I think it’s pretty cool ;-p so I’m sharing both the behind the song and the song which I dedicate to the victims and survivors of the raging California fires right now and everyone else who’s facing chaos. Let hope be your anthem!

“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” – Book of Hebrews, Chapter 11, verse 1

Happy 2025!

I hope all of my readers have enjoyed the past seasonal festivities of 2024 and are looking forward to a bright new year in 2025! I know I am!

This year my only two personal secular New Year’s Resolutions were to “dare to hope” and “dare to encourage” in 2025.

I know I’m not the only who’s had some major challenges and difficulties in the past few years. Sometimes it’s all but drained me of hope and motivation, but I’m still resolved to keep hope alive in 2025 and I’d like to ask as many of you as need it, to hope with me and to resolve to dare to hope in your own lives.

And I ask you to dare to encourage in 2025 too! Speak life into others and be encouraging, not just with words, but with actions…and words too ;). Speak life into yourself by encouraging yourself too! I think it’s safe to say everyone can nearly always use a little more encouragement.

I don’t think we can go wrong with these two resolutions, so let me know if you’ll join in!

Journal New Year

As far as the Journal New Year, I have plenty of goals that I hope to see come to fruition and I’m excited to share some of these with you!

As a backdrop for my publications… I started the Angle and Perspective journal in January of 2023, so I’m still a fairly new writer. Previous to that I’d started blogging in 2022 under pen name Forever Blessed to share my life and volunteer stories.

It was short-lived as changes in my life required me to spend less time on these outlets, so I created Angle and Perspective as a sort-of hybrid influencer journal and enough people showed interested to keep me going. I found it to be something I really enjoyed and became more passionate about it as well, so, in the past year, I’ve worked on building a website, expanding social media platforms and putting more time into writing education.

All these are well worth it, but they’ve taken time and focus away from the actual writing process. Between that and leveraging my other streams of revenue, taking classes, being a mom, having a life, etc. 🙂 I’ve only been able to write when I can make time.

As much as I’d like to make this a full-time job, it’s just not there yet. However, I have taken a lot of steps to try and free up more time to get back to writing and have come up with some methods I’m hopeful will streamline the process of helping me get out content more consistently.

My hope and goal going forward is to publish one article per week or at least bi-weekly instead of monthly. I have a huge backlog of unpublished articles that have at least given me the opportunity to now compile them into multiple series. This will hopefully give you, my readers, a better chance to more fully comprehend the topics I’m writing about; plus give me, the author, a better strategy of focus for my niche.

I’m so grateful to all of you who have stuck with me through this process and have contributed to reading, liking, sharing and commenting on articles (and putting up with my grammar mistakes). And a special thanks to my patron donor (you know who you are!). And to those who have given me opportunities in work!

Anyone else who can become a donor-subscriber this year would greatly contribute to helping me be able to free up more time and resources to devote to getting more stories out!

I still hope to publish articles freely as long as I can, and will continue working on alternative means of revenue to support myself and my work without burdening my readers.

You may see more ads that are affiliate links that I choose myself and make a minor commission off of, for example. These will be catered to my audience as much as possible so I hope you like them and find them useful or entertaining!

I’m excited to share some of the initial volunteer stories that spurred me into writing and more of the topics that you’ve been interested in. So, if you haven’t already, please subscribe on LinkedIn or directly on www.AngleandPerspective.com!

I look forward to sharing this new writing year with you and hope you continue to enjoy reading and learning new angles and perspectives while sharing your own!

Thank you again for your continued support!

Good luck to all of you in your personal new year’s resolutions as well… and don’t forget to spread hope and encouragement to someone..Starting today!!!

Thankful and give glory to Creator, GOD Most High, who is blessed forever!

May you all be forever blessed with life and love and freedom as I am…

iam:ForeverBlessed

Cover photo credits: https://www.pexels.com/photo/coffee-cup-smartphone-notebook-97050/ with edits by Erika Smith

Angle & Perspective