Keep watch over your inner voice
A small encouragement for a New Year
Weekend Exhale is a slice of creative margin and embodied attention. You’ll find bits of poetry, discussions of art, and embodied practices that keep me centered and living slowly in a culture that often pulls the other direction. If this work resonates with you, please consider becoming a subscriber. Or you can buy me a coffee. I’m so glad you’re here.
Call me basic, call me overly earnest, but I love the flurry of journaling prompts, intentions, manifestations, vision boards, and, yes, even resolutions that inevitably arrive on my Substack feed with the turning of the year.
I recently read a note that said something like: The Gregorian calendar is manmade. Life doesn’t start over in January.
Which, yes. This is objectively true.
But isn’t there something beautiful and inherently human about assigning meaning to the changing of the seasons? Isn’t that what we always do? We tell ourselves stories1; we make meaning where meaning lacks; we fashion a framework across the face of the void in order to make our lives a little more predictable, a little more sensical.
So, yes, I’ve spent a few fireglown evenings making my lists and setting my intentions. And I’ll make my yearly vision board on Sunday with my closest gals.
My personal favorite intention-setting exercise contains three little questions, which I’ve Frankenstein-ed (did I mention this was my favorite book I read in 2025? No? Let’s talk about it in 2026) from various prompts I’ve ingested over the years.
In case you want or need a prompt, here are my tried-and-true questions:
1. What worked well this year?
My list included our cooking-at-home rhythm; some big wins in my writing life; no IG on my phone for essentially the whole year; and making new friends who live within walking distance.
2. What didn’t work this year?
I listed a few schedule issues that have caused stress this year; a sudden illness and unexpected surgery/recovery; and not carving out the amount of silence/solitude/dedicated writing time my soul desperately needs.
3. What are my hopes and dreams for the year ahead?
I usually organize this section by theme: body, mind, spirit, home, relationships, work, finances, etc.
I try to balance this last list between practical and achievable goals—like participating in Dry January—with some big, wild dreams, like publishing a poetry collection. I know it takes more than a calendar year! But a girl can dream and work toward it.
I say all this to say, the most poignant moment of my annual reflection practice didn’t come from a prompt. It came from an old journal page I stumbled across.
I flipped through journal pages spanning from 2022 to now, and I stopped at this one. I assumed it was a lengthy quote sans attribution. Some essay collection, some book on writing, some Substack post. Not because it’s so poetic or profound; there’s nothing new under the sun, and it’s very stream of consciousness, as you’ll see. But because it didn’t sound like me, and because I felt like it was speaking, eerily, to me. As I sat on my couch on New Year’s Eve Eve and read words I’d written over a year ago, they struck some distant bell in my spirit. It was as if whatever inhabits our art had reached through the months, grabbed my collar, and drew close to share something essential.
So, in the spirit of new beginnings, I want to share with you this unedited excerpt from my journal. This is not the sort of thing I do, to be clear. But I figured, if it spoke to me, it probably could speak to some of you, too.
If you’re new to your writing/art/creative journey, or feel like it’s too late and your ship has already sailed, or are wondering if there’s room for your dreams in this New Year, I hope you can hold these words like a prayer. Imagine they were written directly to you. Because, in the truest sense, I believe they are.
For those who can’t read my writing or have a visual impairment, here’s the entry transcribed:
“Your writing life can be as fulfilling and as productive—or generative—as you want it to be, and as you make time for. There is a future in which you devote your best hours and time to the work of writing good words and shaping big, ambitious ideas on the page. I can see it. Can you? Hours in a lofted study, surrounded by books, some of which bear your name. Interviews and long emails. Students and mentees. Workshop lectures and retreats. It is possible. Keep that vision alive, and stoke its fires in your heart. The only way you may not get there is if you neglect the quiet tugging of your inner voice and inner vision. Keep watch over that, and you won’t be led astray. Keep room in your heart for the unimaginable.2”
Things I’m loving right now
This video/song series. The perfect sonic backdrop for intention-setting and new beginnings. Olafur is a forever fave.
This book. Someone said this book was a great companion to Katherine May’s Wintering, which I re-read every January. So far, Mary Oliver has not disappointed.
This incense. I purchased it a while back and recently found the tin rolling around at the back of a drawer. It makes my entire house smell like a forest.
This children’s book. It captures winter’s cheer and stillness so well. My wild boys go quiet and still when I read it.
To the creative life—with all its highs and lows—and to an unimaginably good 2026,
Hallie
A famed quote by Joan Didion — We tell ourselves stories in order to live. And also, the title of a book by Alissa Wilkinson, which is on my TBR list for 2026.
Quote by Mary Oliver, the Gateway Poet and Patron Saint of Ordinary Things.