Consistency Is the Cornerstone of Your Gorgeous Garden

In 2024, my word of the year was Enough.

In 2025, it was Consistency.

This year, my word is Sovereignty.

I have been thinking about how those words build upon one another. Enough was about recognizing my own worth. Consistency was about continuing to show up for the life I wanted to build. Sovereignty is about deciding what deserves my time, attention, energy, and care.

And lately, consistency has been calling me back.

Throughout 2025, I worked hard to write and post consistently. Then January 2026 arrived, life got very lifey, and some of that consistency slipped. There were weeks when I didn’t write. Curler Reports did not always appear on schedule. Things that mattered to me were overtaken by things that felt more urgent.

But recently, I’ve started to feel like I’m back.

People have said to me, “I love your writing.” They tell me they look forward to the Curler Reports. If I’m a week late or don’t publish one, someone will inevitably check in:

“Hey, are you okay?”

“What’s going on?”

“I’ve been missing your Curler Report.”

That means more to me than people probably realize. It also reminds me that when we create something consistently, it can become part of the architecture of someone else’s life.

We are living in a world filled with noise, ambiguity, and change. So much is outside our control. Our foundations get shaken. The things we thought we could depend upon disappear or transform without our permission.

In a world like that, there is comfort in knowing that certain things will be there.

It may be a favorite television show. I am still not over the cancellation of Eli Stone.

It may be a newsletter that helps us understand the world. I read or listen to Heather Cox Richardson almost every day. Sometimes it is a journalist, writer, podcast host, teacher, or creator who helps us study our own lives. Sometimes we follow someone forever. Sometimes we need them for only a season.

But we return because they give us something we can count on.

The same is true of a newsletter, a user group, an annual event, a community, a brand, a relationship, or a place we return to on vacation. We come back because it feels familiar. Sometimes it even feels like family.

We know what we are going to get, but there is still room for something new. A little surprise. A new story. A fresh idea. Another layer added to what we already love.

Great producers understand this. People want the things they loved about a production to remain great. You can add to the experience. You can refine it, deepen it, and surprise people. But if you reset the entire factory every year or introduce enormous, unnecessary changes, people get pissed off.

Consistency creates trust.

We've all watched organizations launch enormous new programs with money, resources, fanfare, and lots of hoopla. Then six months, a year, or eighteen months later, the energy disappears. The funding is gone. The people have moved on.

Nobody is tending the garden.

A garden does not continue producing because you planted it once.

You have to turn the soil. Choose the seeds. Plant and replant. Water what is growing. Pull the weeds. Restore nutrients to the soil. Pay attention to what is thriving and what needs care.

You have to return to it.

Community works the same way. So do brands, businesses, creative practices, relationships, and bodies.

Consistency does not mean creating content every day or exhausting yourself in the name of visibility. It means being honest about what you can sustain and then becoming someone people can count on.

If you promise something quarterly, quarterly is wonderful.

Monthly is wonderful.

Weekly is wonderful.

Daily is wonderful.

The perfect cadence is not the most frequent one. It is the one you can tend.

That applies to the ways we care for ourselves, too. There are small things we do regularly because this one life is being lived through this one body. We brush our teeth. We move. We nourish ourselves with good food. We read something that stretches our minds. We try to be kind to other people and to ourselves.

As I get older, and as I watch my parents and other people I love get older, those small acts feel increasingly important.

Take the stairs.

Do the squats.

Eat the food that nourishes you.

Call the friend.

Read the book.

Hit send.

Show up.

Our souls get to be alive in these bodies, in this life, for however long we have. Making the most of that life is rarely about one enormous, dramatic act. It is about the choices we make and remake every day.

And building a beautiful community of friends around ourselves may be one of the most important things we ever do. Deep relationships are built through showing up. Through checking in. Through remembering. Through continuing to reach for one another.

Sometimes consistency is simply hitting send.

And perhaps this is where sovereignty and consistency meet.

Sovereignty is choosing what truly matters to us.

Consistency is how we tend it.

I am learning that consistency does not mean never missing a day, a week, or even a season. It does not require perfection, and it should not become another weapon we use against ourselves.

Consistency means returning.

Returning to the page.

Returning to the garden.

Returning to our bodies.

Returning to our people.

Returning to ourselves.

What we return to becomes what we build.

Have a beautiful day and do something good.

Posted originally on my Maven Musings LinkedIn Newsletter on 8.28.2026

Empathy makes us human; actions make us warriors.

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