My "Word" for 2024 Was "!" and Now I Know Why

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year…Almost!

Well, friend…here we are. One day away from the end of 2024 and what a year it’s been!

I know it’s really popular to find a word for each year to run as the theme throughout the year. I thought I would give it a shot for 2024. By the way, I would love to hear in the chat what your 2024 word was and what came of it for you.

My Word for 2024 And How That’s Turned Out

When I was seeking a word for 2024, I couldn’t even land on one. Instead, as I was journaling and praying about it, this came to mind “!”

It was an interesting thought because I kept calling 2023 the year of the “?” because Kyle lost his job (after a combined 20 years with the company) in May, our son was released from his college baseball team in June with no idea where he was going to go next, and I found myself caught up in the middle trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life as an Empty Nester who had a boomerang kid and husband also trying to figure out their lives at the same time.

So when an exclamation mark became my 2024 “word” I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. But as with all things, now I know.

I’ve written about our year and shared different things that have happened, like my 102 year old grandmother and family matriarch passing away, buying a new business, and finally coming clean on how I really have been feeling about this year.

But I had no idea what was going to happen to make this year truly the year of the EXCLAMATION POINT!!!!!

A Big Change is Coming

So after a year that felt like it was still full of questions, the exclamation point finally came into view.

Back in November, I was talking with someone about putting an ad in a local luxury neighborhood magazine. As we were talking she mentioned in passing that I would be a great fit for having my own magazine franchise and asked if there was any interest. “Yes” popped out of my mouth with no hesitation:

• I had been secretly praying I would discover a business I could do to make a difference and make good money

• I had also secretly thought to myself many times when looking at magazines at doctors’ offices or on people’s coffee tables, “I would love to have a cool magazine one day”

• Hearing others’ stories and helping them go after their dreams is a great joy for me and the girl I was chatting with said about my own business ad said, “I just love hearing people’s stories and helping small businesses grow.” This spoke to me and made me excited about doing the same for businesses in my area. (I was buying an ad in a more urban area.)

• Writing is why I’m on Substack and I love it. Each month I will write the editorial and help community members write their stories to share with their neighborhood.

In a record setting 20 hours I progressed through what should have been a 4 interview process to accept a position as Area Director with N2 corporation and owner of Stroll magazine franchise for a local neighborhood.

What This Means for Real Food Sanity

I have been thinking over how this is going to impact my presence here on Substack and the truth is, I’m really not sure. This new opportunity will be FULL time.

To that end, I will be taking January off to mull this over and see what it will look like. On February 1st, I will post a followup with more information after this little break. To help me help you…

Can I get your feedback for next year?

But for today, here’s a little back story and 2024 recap. For paid subscribers, I will be explaining further about your subscription below.

First, The Real Food Sanity Back Story

I have so much to be thankful for. I started Real Food Sanity weekly meal plan on a different platform on January 1 of this year (2024 if you’re reading later.) I would email my members their meal plans and then I was trying to keep up with writing a monthly email to my entire list.

Substack had been on my radar, but when I read something from

Danielle Walker

I was spurred to finally join myself because I wanted to get back to writing like I had for so long in the blogsphere. So April 21 was my first post and I started with a paid subscription that was available with access to recipe PDFs.

Over the first few months of writing two posts on Substack plus writing a new meal plan each week, I began to realize there was a lot of crossover so in August, I brought my whole meal plan business over to Substack and got everything in one place. We started at Week #31 on August 1st ending the year with Week #52 on December 26. At this writing have added Weeks 1-9 to get you through February immediately then we will hopefully have weeks 10-30 moved over to Substack and everything indexed by season, protein type and more no later than mid-January.

If you’ve enjoyed this year with Real Food Sanity will you share with your friends?

Here’s how 2024 looked by the numbers

You guys have really blessed me this year by reading my Substack. I decided to go back and see what this all looked like and here’s what I found:

• 109 Posts since April 21

• 2 Posts per week

• 52 Weekly Meal Plans

• 204 New Recipes for those Meal Plans

• 23 Posts for “Life at the Table” sub-publication

• 16 New Recipes Included in “Life at the Table” posts

• 394 Subsribers on April 24 (most imported from my old mailing list)

• 817 Subscribers as of this writing

• 50% opening rate for all emails (REALLY GOOD for any email list!)

Get full access to 52 Seasonally-Driven meal plans including a printable packet with all recipes needed to make them, a shopping list, and an optional meal prep guide to get ahead for the week.

Thank you for a great year and I pray you have an incredibly blessed and healthy 2025!

Cheers!!

Christi

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