A Quarter Through the Century (and I still haven’t gotten my life together)

by Kellyn Roth |

January 5, 2025

(Note: a lot of the content of this blog posts was taken from an email I sent to my private list. You can find the signup form here to get all these emails! This is my primary place to share with my readers other than Instagram.)

The end of the year always wears me out.

Sometimes this brings me to the edge of hysterics. Fear, disappointment, and anger will war within me. 2024 was a year that seems to have just left me with one feeling: exhaustion.

I’m tired of being tired. Tired of being sick. Tired of feeling hopeless and lost.

And tired of being negative. Not for others, but for myself. To me, the accomplishments of my friends and family are so impressive … but my own? I honestly can never be enough for myself.

Good news? Being enough for yourself is not a priority here. 😉 Because life is not all about ME but about GOD.

So shut up, negative self talk! You literally couldn’t matter less.

A common social media complaint I’ll see from deconstruction accounts is that traditional Christianity teaches Christians not to trust themselves, which is abusive. I disagree, because honestly, I do not have a trustworthy inner voice … and I’m not sure other people do, either.

I’m inclined to say a LOT of us are hard on ourselves. I do not believe this is limited to those raised in Christian circles (though I have endless empathy for those people who received this negative attitude BECAUSE of evil people who were pretending to represent God!).

But those voices are not from God.

What kinds of things does God say?

That He loves us (Romans 5:8). That we are ultimately worthy because we are created by Him (Luke 12:6-7). That our behavior is NOT what makes Him love us (Ephesians 2:8-9). That we are not capable of being good (Romans 3:23) … and yes, that leads to self doubt, sure, but it’s true that we are not capable of being good on our own.

We are only capable of receiving great love, courage, strength, and good when we turn to God, to Jesus, and allow Him to live through us.

This is not necessarily even limited to Christians, as God is so at work in the world that we see His goodness everywhere!

But all of that comes from God.

Who am I to say, “I should have done better!” when I can only do what God wills?

Who am to live in the guilt of my sins and my failures when I have repented and been washed clean by Jesus?

Who am I to blame myself for what I cannot control, when God is the One with ultimate control?

Anyways, I’m going over 2024 below, before we officially dive into 2025. Let’s talk about the year we had!

Looking into the Past: 2024

2024 started with Matthew getting a new job at a company called M6 Revolutions. This was a boon for us in more ways than one and has proven to be a HUGE blessing.

So we started the year in our little cabin in the snowy woods on my in-laws’ property. It’s a gorgeous place, but it meant both Matthew and I lived about 45 windy-roaded minutes from M6 Revolutions and from where my buddy Matthias lives.

This year, I have been so blessed to be able to work with Matthias. (Can you believe it’s been 5 years since I started working with him, and he’s 10???!!!)

Matthias needed a big surgery in the spring. Fortunately, that went well, and he’s now returned to his rambunctious, happy, sweet, stubborn self … and with better kidney function! Thank God!

I was able to keep working with Matthias right after the surgery, which I hope helped his family have a sense of normal. Then, as he recovered, we went on lots of adventures and had our normal fun schooling together. We’ve been attending a weekly preschool class of sorts together, which has been a big growing experience for Matthias (and a big reminder to me that classroom management skills never go away and children never change :P).

We lost our state funding mid-year because I was unable to drive several hours away multiple times a week for required training. I didn’t have the time (I work multiple jobs!), a reliable vehicle, or, honestly, the energy!

Unfortunately, Washington state is much more concerned with procedure than with real people, and rural populations are never considered. :-/ This caused me no small amount of stress, but due to a blessing from my parents, we were able to find ways to keep working together. I’m so incredibly thankful for that! What an unearned blessing!

I honestly don’t know what I’d do without Matthias and his family. I love all his brothers, but I’m especially close to his younger brothers, Rosh and Gil, and his mother is a sweet friend and mentor who is an incredible encouragement to me!

Which brings us to the biggest thing that happened this year … we moved to Trout Lake!

I get to live 7 minutes from Matthias, and Matthew is similarly close to the physical location of his job. The community has been awesome here, and we’re slowly making connections. It’s also nice to be close to a church that I actually want to attend.

This move has been such a blessing. We’re renting the house from a couple who are giving us a great deal, and the house is perfect in so many ways. I can’t imagine a better spot for us right now!

The move was not easy for me, and from mid-June when I returned home and started moving through August, I just about died. 😛 Panic attacks and bad dreams and constant exhaustion plagued me. I had to do a lot of the moving on my own due to poor timing, and I’d already pushed myself hard in early June (more on that later).

However, I am in recovery (yes, my immune system is still letting me know I’m not fully recovered, lol), and I’m so happy with the house and the results of all the hard work and generosity of everyone who helped us move and blessed us in various ways, especially my parents.

SPEAKING OF WHICH … one of my dear friends got married this year! Aimee and I flew to Minnesota in June to hang out with her and be in her wedding!

Congratulations, Eva and Noah! <3

In June, I also flew to Chicago (yes, from Minnesota, lol) to graduate from the Author Conservatory, which was such a blessing!

Speaking of which, I’m still working for the Author Conservatory, and I’m LOVING it! It is genuinely one of the best things about my life. I’ve been managing their anthologies (the publishing side) and working as a student advisor, both of which have been so rewarding. I love the company, their mission, and their amazing team! Kara Swanson-Matsumoto in particular has been such a blessing to me as I work with her on these anthologies, and I get to work with several other friends, too!

I got to go on lots of fun adventures with friends and with Matthew this year! Some pictures below. But I got to go to the Glory Writers retreat in May, and then Aimee and I went to the beach approximately 2,000 times and the mountain once. Bailey and I saw a lot of waterfalls, and we went to the Astoria area with Matthew earlier this month which was FANTASTIC and IDEALIC.

This year I’ve been amazed by the friends I have. For so many years, I felt alone and unwanted. I doubted I would ever have close in-person friends.

Bailey is my rock, my oldest and truest bestie, who will talk about everything with me from the latest gossip about our small town to deep theological issues. Our conversations are random but so encouraging. When we went to Astoria, we spend a significant amount of time making plans for 2025. We discussed our failings from the last year and made plans to improve in the future! Despite Bailey not feeling great (sorry, Bay) and our poor planning skills, God really made this the perfect weekend, from the weather to the places we visited to the discussions we had. Matthew was our tour guide and support system, and he made everything dreamy for us.

In these last few years, Aimee and I have become pretty tight, and now I can’t imagine life without her. We still see things differently in a lot of ways, but her friendship has been a balm, and I’ve been so grateful to have her visit me often in this last year. (I mean, I’ve also visited her a few times, but my car doesn’t like to drive, and I have a spare room, so she’s come this way a lot more.) We’ve had a lot of amazing adventures this year (mostly at the beach, because we realized we can just, you know, go to the beach), and I like to think we’ve helped each other relax and find peace in the craziness in both our lives.

This year also made me aware that I am actually one of those people who takes on emotional burdens for others, which sucks because I thought I was Not Like That. I kid you not, I grew up thinking I had sociopathic tendencies, which is so dumb, especially given the definition of “sociopath,” but I was a dramatic teen. Now, this emotional burdening only applies to the few people who I have deep loyalty toward; otherwise, I don’t find myself taking on the emotions of others at all. Of course, I was forced to realize this fact since so many crises have hit various people I care about this year. I’m at the point where, if anyone says or does anything remotely cruel toward anyone I care about, I will be organizing a fun lil homicide to deal with the issue. (Kidding. Maybe.) However, in a weird way, this has been very Good For Me. In one of those, “I guess that’s handy to know, and also, motherhood is going to be less of an emotional breeze than I thought” ways. I feel like I learn a lot all the time about the kind of mom I might be sometimes, which is good and bad because it just makes me more delusional. 😛

Of course, the year wrapped up with Christmas. Christmas felt a little different this year … oh, well, it does every year. But this year, I only cried about not having a baby maybe four or five times. Otherwise, I didn’t find myself thinking about our infertility a ton.

It’s hard for me to accept this as it’s not peace, but neither is it indifference or coping. I’m not sure what it is. An uneasy truce, perhaps. I’ll repeat what I said at the beginning of this email: I feel worn out. It’s not depression, nor is it anxiety, nor is it precisely burnout. I know those feelings well. I’m too tired to worry about it, and for once, my body and mind have agreed that we are indeed too tired. I didn’t even know that was possible.

So that was put off, and we enjoyed Christmas. Granted, I was too tired to feel like I really loved it, and a lot of it felt strangely hollow as a result, but I did love our decorations, and I got to enjoy a lot of little beautiful Christmasy moments.

I’m not sure what 2025 will look like. I know I’m making some changes in my lifestyle and writing. I know I’m giving myself a pseudo-break from publishing to focus on rest and my various day jobs, which y’all will have to hold me to! If I start publishing a book in the next year (other than Fingerprints in Frost and Like the Air After Rain), STOP ME.

Also, just for fun, here are some Toph pictures. Toph is my excellent cat, and yes, she is named after the Avatar: The Last Airbender character.

Goal Wrap-up for 2024

~ Writing ~

Edit Like the Air After Rain (The Hilton Legacy, #2) with the help of my talented alpha reader team and editors. (DONE)
Write a first draft of Like Lightning in a Bottle (The Hilton Legacy, #3). (DONE)
Write (or rather, finish) a first draft of another writing project of some sort. If I get more writing done, good. However, two books is enough! (DONE … ish? I arguably wrote a couple short stories and a novella, but I would have liked to do more.)
Graduate from the Author Conservatory. (DONE)

~ Marketing ~

Publish at least twice monthly on Reveries & Lilacs (& ideally, every week, but I’ll probably take at least a few breaks!). (FAILED! I’m de-prioritizing my blog, in case you haven’t noticed.)
Put monthly effort into growing my email list as well as maintaining semi-consistent emails (occasional breaks being a good thing). (DONE! I feel like I’ve done way more to build my email list than ever before, which has been such an amazing experience.)

~ Publishing ~

Publish If Ye’d Only Say, my short story in the second Author Conservatory anthology (spring or summer 2024). (DONE!)
Publish The Artist of Hearthstone Cottage (January 2024), my novella, with the A Very Bookish Romance collection. (DONE!)
Publish Novelists in November (November 2024), Wild Blue Wonder Press’s second anthology. (DONE!)
Open submissions for Fingerprints in Frost, Wild Blue Wonder Press’s third anthology. (DONE! And we closed submissions & will be revealing our cover on January 14th!)

~ Personal ~

Improve my intake of certain nutrients (e.g. eat well). (Meh. I didn’t do this most of this year, but I feel like I’ve taken steps in that direction, which I’m proud of.)
Find a way to be in bed for a reasonable amount of time (e.g. sleep well). (Nope. Still figuring this out!)
Learn more about God every day. (I always do a couple undefinable goals every year, quite by accident. I did learn about God! I do every year. But I don’t know if I learned something every day.)

2025 Goals

Work

Creating Great (Fictional) Works

Of course, I want to keep writing! I am taking a hiatus from making any publishing plans for at least the first half of the year, if not more, but I’m actually hoping this will give me some more time to dive into writing projects!

Here’s a list of the stories I would love to work on (if not finish) in 2025:

Like Lightning in a Bottle (The Hilton Legacy, Book 3): currently drafted! In 2025, I hope to complete alphas and two rounds of edits.
Lady of Influence (for Wild Blue Wonder Press’s 2026 or 2027 multi-author project): currently half-drafted. In 2025, I hope to complete a draft.
A Thrill of Hope (for an upcoming unannounced multi-author project): draft and edit!
Time of Grief (The Chronicles of Alice & Ivy, Book 7): I’d love to complete drafting this! I’ve got about 25k done thus far, so 25-30% of it done already.
The Duchess Imperative, The Duke’s Twin, My Fair Marchioness, & Her Last Duke (a Regency romantic comedy series): I have the first draft of The Duchess Imperative, The Duke’s Twin, and My Fair Marchioness written. This year, I would love to do some of the (very extensive) rewrites I have planned, which would essentially look like drafting a novella and two novels, in addition to possibly drafting Her Last Duke. That said, mostly, I want to make a plan for the revisions and make some decent progress.
The McAllen Brothers series (a spin-off of The Chronicles of Alice & Ivy): I’m thinking about drafting this, so this is more of a secondary project. I may work on bits and pieces of this throughout the year, as I have time. A stretch goal would be to draft 1, or all 3, of them.
Possibly, I’ll also finish drafting my untitled Whispers in Waves story, but I’m not sure!

Marketing Published Novels

Of course, I want to spend this year marketing my stories, too! Here are some of my sub-goals for this.

Pursue a cross-promotion opportunity with another author every 1-2 months.

Of course, this may not always be feasible, but I want to get better at supporting other authors and cross-promotion, so this is a part of that!

Remain consistent in putting out posts to my Instagram that are helpful and interesting to my audience … and be open to finding new ways to do so.

I love Instagram, and I’m excited to keep learning and growing as I try my best to bless my audience! I’m hoping this will include

Continue building my email list & finding new ways to send interesting emails to serve my followers.

This is probably my main marketing focus. (Make sure you’re subscribed to my email list if you’re not already!) Now, I still need to do some more research and learn more, but whatever I do, I want it to benefit my email list.

Supporting the Author Community

One of my bigger overarching goals this year is to give back more to the author community! I feel like oftentimes I can take so much and not give nearly enough. For that reason, I’m making some of my goals about giving back to the author community.

Read 6 indie books this year that I’m in no way involved in the creation of, review them, and talk about them on social media/blog/email list if I feel comfortable doing so.

This means not books I’ve published, formatted, edited, et cetera. That said, I may not LOVE them all, and I’m prepared to be negative if need be. 😛 So these may not make it beyond Goodreads.

I haven’t read much in the indie world in the last few years, unless I knew I would love it, because I know I’m not going to like all of them, and also, I just don’t want to read many indie books. As an author, you can get a lot of flack for negatively reviewing “the competition,” and since I can’t be dishonest, I haven’t wanted to spend a lot of time on something that may only lead to me creating enemies of people I truly admire and like!

That said, I know I am a reviewing kind of author, and I do want to participate in this community more! So I will at least be reviewing my reads on Goodreads … and then if I love them, I’ll share about them in other places, too, in hopes of helping some authors of quality fiction get more visibility.

Feature an author or book on my newsletter at least once a month and post about at least six books on my blog over the course of the year.

My email list is becoming my main marketing focus as an author, and I’m committing to devoting a section of one email a month to talk about an author or book I love! I’m hoping these spotlights will help my readers learn about more great books … and more great authors that I love, too!

And no, I’m not completely abandoning this blog, and I’d love to make helping other authors a part of this! I’ll try to participate in some more blog tours or other launches as part of this, though this can be hard for me just because I’m bad at keeping track of things, and also, I am concerned that some authors/publishers are not taking quality seriously or are acting in an unethical manner. Yet I lack the time to individually quality check recently-launched books BEFORE featuring them + that would interfere with my ability to post closer to launch dates!

So I’ll try to do this while sticking to authors/publishers I trust, but I want to state that I cannot necessarily recommend EVERY book I’ll be sharing here with 100% certainty or vouch for EVERY author’s EVERY action. And, in fact, it’s unreasonable to ask bloggers and other “influencers” to do that level of research about everything they share. *shrug*

Find one little thing every month to do to add to create and foster community.

I don’t know what this will be, but I’d like to do SOMETHING every month to continue growing a community of like-minded readers and writers. I don’t know exactly what this will look like every month, but I’m going to keep learning and growing. I’ve thought of things like a reading challenge or book club or just participating more heavily in already established communities. Let me know if you have any ideas!

Being an Excellent Employee

At the Author Conservatory and my other little day jobs! Now, this is not something I haven’t always tried my best to do, but I want to make sure I’m honoring the jobs I am committed to by bringing my best possible work to them. This is a simple (Christian!) principle that I think we could all abide by … go the extra mile and be the kind of person who pursues excellence everywhere!

Life

Spiritual Life

I have some pretty basic goals this year:

Do a year-long study of 1 & 2 Timothy.

See below for more on this!

Read through the Bible in a year.

I actually kind of did this last year, but I felt like I wasn’t really as dedicated as I ought to be, so I’m trying to get better at not skimming and actually taking time to think about what I’m reading.

I also, of course, want to pray more and fellowship with Christians, but I won’t bore you with all the details.

Physical Health

I’m not good at maintaining my physical health AT ALL. It’s frankly a miracle I’m not bed-ridden. I don’t count as chronically ill, but I am so bad at basic things: eating, sleeping, exercising. I’ve gained a lot of weight and my immune system is shot. That said, every time I have made resolutions in this area, I’ve failed. I just can’t seem to get a grasp on it!

Therefore, I have an unusual goal:

Do a 10-day “detox” once a month.

What this looks like will change from month to month, but in general, it’ll probably look like avoiding carbs, sugar, excess caffeine, processed foods, and anything else that makes me feel icky. Some months, I may also cut out other things (like, for my 10 days this month, I’m not doing much fruit, only a few nuts, no eggs, and no potatoes/rice which I probably will do other months unless I find it makes me feel sick). Eventually I’m also hoping the 10-day detox will come with better sleeping habits and more frequent, routine exercising.

Now, yes, 10 days out of the month is not enough to maintain decent health. I’m hoping a) some of these habits will stick around the rest of the month, and b) the simple action of forcing myself to do some of these things over and over again throughout the year, I’ll not be nearly so bad at doing them on the regular.

Here’s the thing, though: I’d rather have 10 days out of the month when I did these things that none at all. Because I doubt there I had 10 days total in 2024 when I got a good ratio of protein and plants and didn’t have some form of carb or sugar that was inflammatory. I have a huge amount of inflammation in my body (I’m on day 5 of my 10 days for this month, and I’ve lost 5 lbs which was almost certainly all water and inflammation!). Plainly I need this!

The truth is, I don’t eat that much at all, so the biggest challenge here has been making myself eat, which this time, I haven’t done a very good job of.

My other goal is:

Find a good way to make exercise a part of your week.

From August through September, I exercised every day save for the occasional weekends. And I did feel a lot better! I wasn’t doing well through those two months, so the fact that anything at all was able to improve my general malaise was great.

I fell off the boat by October, and I haven’t really picked it up since. My favorite mode of exercising (bicycling) is not so feasible now that there’s snow on the ground.

I feel like part of being healthy (perhaps the biggest part!) is finding a way to fit it into your life rather than trying to wrap your life around it. Since I’ve never been able to wrap my life around anything, I am instead seeking ways to make health conform to my needs. 😛

Emotional Control

I just wanted to mention this as another area where I’m hoping to grow even though I don’t have a goal attached to it. I believe it is very important to experience emotions … but I also believe it’s important not to let them lead you.

I’m trying a couple things this year, as well as just knowing that my other resolutions will help, in hopes of regulating my emotions, which can be a little all over the place when I’m in private. I would not call myself an emotionally-led person, but I definitely feel like my feelings are big contributors to my depressive episodes and anxiety attacks. That said, I know that there are simple things I can do to improve my response to such things. So I’m praying about and working on that in 2025, too.

Infertility Journey

I won’t go into too much detail here (maybe later!), but we’re still stuck here, and we’re hopeful to make some steps forward in terms of testing and/or treatment this year. I’m not sure what this will look like, but my goal is simply to:

Be brave!

Not a SMART goal perhaps, but I need the reminder. 😉

I also am working on private goals to do with relationships, but nothing is quite set in stone yet, so I won’t share about those!

2025 Word of the Year

For this year, I decided on the word “valor,” which is so incredibly dramatic for day to day life, because it means:

great courage in the face of danger

That said, we do need valor to follow Christ boldly, and I certainly feel like I need more valor in my day-to-day life. I can be such a coward about simple things! I know I’m going to have to make a lot of phone calls and talk to some medical professionals this year, not to mention overcome my own laziness, and I need some of God’s courage to get that done.

To pair with this word, I’ve decided to use this verse:

For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. (2 Timothy 1:7)

I’ve always found great comfort in this verse, but I have never done a deep-dive study into 2 Timothy (or 1 Timothy) for that matter. Frankly, between attention issues and busyness, I don’t often study God’s Word as thoroughly as I would like. I read it, though not as much as I would like to read, but I am often a poor studier. I don’t glean half as much as I’d like to.

For this reason, I have made myself a mini Bible study, which I am calling “Valor” even though this is just a personal meditation point.

If you would like to receive my mini Bible study (this is just my to do list for the year when it comes to reading 2 Timothy and to a certain degree 1 Timothy), and hear updates as I dive into the study as someone who is not so good at studying, you can click here to grab the PDF and hear the updates once a month!

https://kellynroth.myflodesk.com/2-timothy

TTFN!

~Kell~

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