Life With a Side of Yamz

Yo. Here’s my 2025 recap!

What I Read

• (Audio) Book that made me laugh and cry: Leslie F*cking Jones: A Memoir, by Leslie Jones.
• Book that I underlined and earmarked the most: Having It All: What Data Tells Us About Women’s Lives and Getting the Most Out of Yours, by Dr. Corinne Low.
• Book that changed my perspective: The Artist’s Way, by Julia Cameron.
  • Completed FOUR notebooks of morning pages :-) My tips for building the habit of writing morning pages:
    • Start each entry with “Today is [Day of the Week], [Month and Date]” (for example: “Today is Wednesday, December 31, 2025.” Doing so for each entry makes it easy to start writing, even if I don’t know what I’m going to say next.
    • End each entry with “I, [Your Name], am a prolific artist [or whatever you are prolific at].” For example: “I, Yamairah, am a prolific author and illustrator.”
    • Write in pencil, on paper. For reasons I can’t explain, I felt I could write more freely and honestly this way.

What I Learned

• I am Autistic with ADHD (sometimes referred to as AuDHD) and have Alexithymia.
• Completing the VIA Strengths Test helped me realize that I was over-flexing my strength of Prudence and under-flexing the rest of my strengths:
  • Love of Learning
  • Humor
  • Creativity
  • Appreciation of Beauty & Excellence
  • I also learned that I was underusing my Leadership strength to the point that it is now in the lowest five of my strengths, which helped me understand why I was feeling so burned out from managing people (it’s not so much the managing of direct reports as it is the nonsense of “managing up” and managing office politics). Contexts of underuse include having nobody to influence, working with colleagues who do not believe in the cause of consistently practicing ethical design for the greater good, and having to work alone. Underuse of my leadership strengths has left me feeling powerless and disheartened. The Strengths Test helped me connect all of those dots!
• I like posting content but… posting content regularly is hard ?
  • Social Media Growth (yes, we’re calling it “Growth”, LOL):
    • Grew YouTube following from 0 to 25. Posted 119 videos with 67,039 views.
    • Started my first TikTok (the most fun and easy-to-use social platform) account in Nov. 202. Grew from 0 to 128 followers. Posted 226 videos resulting in 89K post views, 6,509 likes, and 258 shares.
    • Grew LinkedIn from 463 to 528 (177 engagements).
    • Instagram, LOL – 40 posts and grew to 27 followers from 0.
      • Still not interested in using Instagram :-) It’s not as user friendly as TikTok, and I don’t care for Meta.
  • Going forward:
    • Will continue posting silly content anytime the mood strikes (leaning into my Humor strength).
    • Will attempt to consistently post thoughtful content at least once a month (leaning into my Creativity, Love of Learning, and Appreciation of Beauty & Excellence strengths).

What I Tried

• Continued therapy, then tried less therapy, then found a new therapist who I’m seeing weekly from this list of Neurodivergent Therapists: ndtherapists.com/colorado/
• Making art, especially when feeling strong emotions.
  • Recurring family art nights (around once a month).
  • Art therapy (activities mostly sourced from Eunice Lim’s TikTok: @eunicelimlmft).
• Completing a few digital art classes.
• How to Draw Adorable: Joyful Lessons for Making Cute Art book by Carlianne Tipsey.
• Mike Rohde’s Sketchnote Workshop course: rohdesign.com/workshops-set
• Creative writing (online courses through Lighthouse Writers Workshop and Gotham Writers).

What I Failed At

• A UX/UI design course.
• Transcribing my videos.
• Managing up.
• Organizing my phone’s photos and videos.

Things to Continue and Things to Try

• Regular artist dates with myself.
• Sending postcards.
• More art therapy.
• Continue morning writing 1-3 pages.
• Completing Children’s Writing II course.
• Completing 1-2 manuscripts (nonfiction and picture book).
• Submitting 1 manuscript (nonfiction).
• Launching my consulting business.
• Reading Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert.

Here’s to a transformative 2026!