In 2012 I picked the phrase will-power and self-possession as a kind of anchor — something to keep in front of me through the year. (I literally wrote it on a card and stuck on the wall above my desk. For a year.) I didn’t know I was starting a practice. In 2015 I chose simplify. I’ve now been picking one word or short phrase a year for thirteen years, and the cumulative practice has become as interesting as each year’s choice.
This thread is a path through what that practice has actually been like — what made certain words land, the year-end reflection ritual that grew up around it, and what I’ve noticed across the arc. It’s about the practice, not the words. Follow this thread if you’re wondering what a small annual ritual can do over a long enough timeline.
A phrase for 2025
constantine.name — January 2025
Start here. The practice in one place: what a cynosure is (the word David Bourne pointed me toward), every phrase since 2012, and the arc I see in hindsight — simplification and increasing self-awareness.
Cynosure
7 for Sunday — January 2025
What the word actually means. Greek for dog’s tail — Ursa Minor, the constellation always overhead (in the Northern Hemisphere where the Greeks and I are situated), the fixed point you can navigate by. Worth a few minutes on the etymology before going further.
Festina lente
constantine.name — October 2020
One phrase in the moment of its picking. The bit that matters isn’t the statement, it’s later, in the moment the phrase was made for: When I’m literally knee deep in tree trimmings stumbling around my yard, exhausted and I should quit soon before I get hurt. That’s where a phrase becomes a cynosure.
Looking back
constantine.name — December 2020
The year-end-ish ritual that wraps up each year’s cynosure. Borrowing Vonnegut — “well if that isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.” The arbitrary calendar roll-over isn’t the point. Having any anchor for periodic looking-back is.
Humility
constantine.name — December 2023
This describes how the practice evolved. In recent years I’ve been choosing aspirational phrases — picking what’s hard for me to be, with journaling-for-the-win evidence that these cynosures work. I chose humility for 2024 because it felt difficult.
Simplicity, patience, compassion
constantine.name — April 2025
The practice generalizing beyond personal. Lao Tzu’s three things, used both as guides for myself and as questions for shaping how I coach others. The cynosure habit becomes a coaching framework — the phrases that work as personal anchors also work as questions to ask someone else.
2026
constantine.name — January 2026
This year’s cynosure is Temperance. In all things. Particularly in blog posts. That’s the closing — the practice has finally caught up with the writing about the practice.
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