Consistency and Rhythm

and a "To Done" list to boot

Hello reader, and a happy 2026 to you. It is a new Gregorian year, and never before have I felt so misaligned with that in my body as I have presently.

For the first time since I began working at the age of sixteen, I had the last two weeks of the year off. I didn’t have to report to an office, and I kept my calendar free of client appointments. I barely opened my laptop, looked at email, or tended to work related tasks.

It felt heavenly. Even the weather supported this as lake effect snow and a Bomb Cyclone hit Northern Michigan, shutting down the town that I live in for a day and making leaving the house less necessary for even longer.

I joyfully accepted the invitation to cocoon even deeper with my favorite blanket, heat pad, a good book, and my phone silenced.

To surrender to the this pace has been both a gift, and a challenge.

Being an entrepreneur comes with immense pressure to always be Doing. To hustle and grind. To show up - and work hard - even when you lack the desire to do so.

And the one concept that is resounding from every avenue is that consistency is key.

As someone who is practicing living her life in a way that honors intuition, energy, and my Human Design, with space to honor my practices and rituals that keep me/return me to center, I have been challenged by my relationship to consistency.

I’ve always felt that to be consistent, I must have a specific and/or rigid routine. If I didn’t, I failed. I wasn’t committed. I didn’t believe in what I wanted enough. I wasn’t driven or hungry enough.

Like this newsletter, for example. Earlier in 2025 I committed to posting weekly, and it went well for a while. But I didn’t post at all in December. Does that mean I am no longer committed to my goals? Does that mean I’ve failed? Does that mean I am no longer good enough to receive what I want out of my business? Out of life in general?

I just feel like that way of thinking can be real hog wash. All of the pressure to grind hard and constantly show up regardless of our desire or capacity. It’s exhausting. When did rest become such a form of self sabotage?

Sometimes I just need the rest. Space. Permission to listen to what my body and intuition are telling me. To honor my bursts of energy, and to honor when it is time to take my foot off the gas.

After those moments of pause, I always return. Always. And that’s got me thinking; perhaps consistency isn’t always about how many times I can consistently show up in a predictable, rhythmic cadence or sequence that is measurable and trackable. A rhythm that looks or seems obvious to onlookers.

Perhaps it is more about my capacity to return to the commitments I’ve made to myself while honoring my rhythm.

Perhaps consistency has its own rhythm, and I get to divorce myself from how its been defined for me my whole life.

I’m so unbelievably devoted to myself and my desires. Had I not been as devoted as I am, I would be in a much different place in my life after all of the trials I’ve experienced over the last six years. As a friend said to me on the phone the other day, I always figure it out. I always come around. I always return to the devotion and keep moving forward, and always in a way that is more “Me” than before.

All of this to say, January is still feeling like such a coccoon to me. And while the world is aligned with the Gregorian calendar of “New Year New Me”, and pushing hard this month toward goals that will seemingly dissipate soon, I find myself aligning more to February and March as my new beginning.

The Spring Equinox, the Roman calendar, the Lunar/Chinese New Year, and agricultural cycles all point to the second and third month as the true or “Energetic” new year. To my body and energy system, that is such a relief.

I will begin working again next week, but I am savoring the acceptance of the invitation to move with the energy I’m feeling. To go slow, to rest easy, to nourish well, and to remember that everything is happening even when I think it isn’t.

To Done List

Admittedly, I did feel it necessary to take inventory of 2025. As a reminder of the “everything that is happening even when I think it isn’t”.

- Attuned to Reiki
- Worked a full time corporate job
- Left a full time corporate job to return to coaching
- Presented a speech publicly through the Let Her Speak program with a Tedx Coach
- Went through a break up
- Volunteered as an Ambassador through local chamber
- Taught my first class on Human Design
- Guest on Living Sustainably podcast
- Participated in a pilot for a new coaching CRM
- Launched a leadership retreat
- Cancelled a leadership retreat due to no one signing up
- Kicked coaching off of the pedestal and stepped fully into Akashic Records reading and teaching
- Attained licensure in massage after a 9 year hiatus
- Enrolled in NMC for free college education
- Invited to teach how to read the Akashic Records through the Green Door Folk School
- Returned to photography
- As an alumni of the Let Her Speak program, I mentored a couple of the women in the second cohort
- Publish twice in Northern Michigan Woman Magazine
- Facilitated a monthly Women’s Group
- Started a YouTube channel
- Wrote more consistently for Field Notes that I ever have, with a mostly weekly cadence ;)
- Developed a clear voice and signature design in my brand and marketing
- Launched a new website
- Began Tallyho Consulting Co., a freelancing business for creative strategy and storytelling, systems and operations, marketing, and business coaching
- Stripped myself of old identities, owned my creative expression, stepped into spiritual embodiment, had a professional reclamation, worked through piles and piles of resistance, and honed in on self trust

And when I asked ChatGPT to tell me what it was reading between the lines of my year it said:

You spent the first half of your life staring upward at who you thought you needed to become. In 2025 you dismantled the pedestals — coaching, careers, expectations, comparison, even the idea of being “figured out.” When you stopped idolizing the identity, you rediscovered the craft, the joy, and your own mastery.

Oof.

May this inspire you to make a To Done list of your own. Because whether it’s time, people, concepts, or identities you once clung to like a emotional support water bottle, nothing is more important than the return. That is the real mastery.

With a restful kind of devotion - Tallyho,
Jenny