Year in Review

what's my metric? what's yours?

Dec 14, 2025

Hi, readers of the intangibles! I’m essayist Allison Kirkland, and this publication was created to celebrate and explore the world of creative nonfiction and the writing life. I’m so glad you’re here.

A quick note before we start: There are two spaces left in the January Writing Circle and the deadline is tomorrow! (Dec 15th) Read more about it and register here.

I noticed this full-to-bursting gardenia bush on the way to an appointment. Of course I had to stop and snap a pic. (And smell it!)

Dear writers and readers,

As I was reflecting on how to sum up my year, I wasn’t sure how I felt about it or how I wanted to think about it. I made a list of my accomplishments — grants won, essays published — and that didn’t feel quite right. I made a list of my challenges — some of which you’ll read below — and that didn’t feel quite right. Then I saw a note here on Substack by the writer Kathleen Schmidt, and it said: “One of the most essential things an author can do is define what success means to them.”

It was a good reminder to re-center my own metrics of success, and they popped out at me immediately, almost like they were little thought bubbles around my head: I feel successful when my work brings me meaning, connection and joy. It’s easy to get swept up in external forms of success (and believe me, I am not immune to that!), but when it comes right down to it, meaning and connection are why I started writing and teaching, and they never fail to energize me.

Here are a just few ways that my creativity provided me with meaning, connection and joy this year:

A first!

One of the highlights of 2025 was having my essays taught in the classroom. Joanna Penn Cooper , an essayist and poet, taught Bad Body and No Ugly Crying in her workshops this year. When she told me this I almost fell over. This was a first for me.

The classroom was one of the main avenues where I was exposed to essays, novels and short stories that blew my mind, made me think, helped me make sense of my life, and made me want to be a writer.

And now my own work is being taught in a classroom? The full circle-ness of it gives me chills, and makes me feel like I am part of the conversation about what it means to write, part of the lineage of other writers who have come before me, who have spent their lives communicating their experiences for others to witness.

A new discovery: the life of an essay

I always knew that I was looking forward to publishing my essays in literary magazines, but I didn’t anticipate the other gifts that would come from this experience. Publishing writing doesn’t have the immediacy of acting or singing (where you can always hear the applause right away) but essays do have an afterlife, echoes that reverberate after publication, sometimes in surprising ways, but always in a way that makes me feel more connection to the world.

No Ugly Crying, the flash essay I wrote about my late cousin Jennifer, gave me the opportunity to make something beautiful out of something hard, which is one of the main reasons I write. Meaning! So much meaning.

And it has lived several lives since it appeared in River Teeth’s Beautiful Things. It was published in September of this year, bringing Jennifer’s life into view for so many people who didn’t know her, and making people aware of the deadly nature of ovarian cancer, a cancer that still doesn’t have a regular screening — which means that by the time it’s diagnosed it’s usually too late.

Writer and literary citizen Lita Kurth read this flash essay in River Teeth, and asked me to read it in her literary event, which allowed it to find new readers, and allowed me to spend more time with it, to hear myself read it aloud, and to come to a new level of acceptance about the difficult year that my family spent saying goodbye to Jennifer.

The whole experience came with some of its own mystical resonances: No Ugly Crying debuted online the same week of the anniversary of Jennifer’s passing, and it was included in the literary event the week of Jennifer’s birthday. Goosebumps.

Sticking with it

2024 was a bold year, full of big personal changes, unexpected twists and turns and writing that felt easeful and plentiful. I always had a new idea. 2025 has been a quieter year, full of lots of internal growth, and the writing has felt more difficult. It’s been harder for me to enter a creative flow state, and it’s been harder for me to translate what’s in my head with how it looks when it’s finalized on the page. Regardless of how the essays looked in “finished” form, it has taken more work to narrow the gap between my first draft and the vision I have for my final draft.

What does this mean? I am not sure that it means anything. But I gained a lot of meaning from the fact that I stuck with it, even when it was hard, even when writing didn’t feel quite as fun. When you do what you say you’re going to do you keep a promise to yourself that helps you develop self-trust and reinforces your own agency.

And I had a realization: how a year feels is often very different from what really happened. This year didn’t feel as good — trouble with flow state, raised expectations for myself, difficulty coming up with new ideas — but what really happened is that I created a lot of work that I’m really proud of, and I think I became a better writer, even if it felt harder.

Building community, offline and on

I made more time to connect with other writers this year. I went to some lit readings and book launches. I made a point to plan co-writing afternoons with other writers whose work I admire — and co-writing always led to interesting conversations or collaborations. I invited other writers to my studio to talk shop, vent and share their own victories. On Instagram I shared writing from my peers that was inspiring me. Because of this I am ending 2025 with more knowledge, more writing friends in my corner that I can learn from, and some joyful memories that fueled me when the writing got tough. Connection!

I write as a way to be in the world. But sometimes I forget that I can be in the world in other ways too!

Noticing

This year one of the benefits of having a creative practice became very clear: my capacity for noticing has grown much bigger. I have less tendency to live life in a blur of activity and instead — curious for inspiration or to see something new — I stop and notice. I’m often surprised by what I see.

I’ve always said that one of my favorite things about being a creative nonfiction writer is that I get to use my imagination but I also get to celebrate and grieve the world as it truly is. Part of my job is to notice the world instead of rush through it.

Making a priority to notice the world has made me feel more present to my life, more appreciative of the little things, and more reflective of my own desires.

Just a few months ago I was driving up to my house when I noticed that my two neighbors were kneeling down in their side yard, camera in hand. Curious, I made my way over.

“A monarch butterfly just hatched out of its chrysalis,” they said. “Come see.”

I watched the butterfly dry its wings, practice flapping them and then finally fly away.

In Case You Missed It

If you’d like to do some reading over the holidays, check out a few of my favorite essays from this year in the intangibles:

the intangibles

Discussion about this post

Ready for more?