2025 Annual Review | Valuing To Creative Abundance – Hello, I'm DK – creative producer and speaker coach

sun setting - wellington - justadandak.com — Own shot, sunset over West Wellington

Noting the adventures and insights gained in 2025 plus highlighting the intended pathway(s) for the next 365 days.

As shared previously, this past year was about valuing the reality which my ingrained principles has created.

It was also about…

RECOVERY

Without sounding dramatic, my body / spirit needed to ‘land’ and heal from the previous eighteen months before that which was a mess of challenges—after all, you bleed more when the knife is withdrawn.

Stasis was forced into my being after a couple bouts of ear infections and flu, then acute bronchitis (a new experience for me, and it only gets a half a star as it’s truly rubbish), with the latter laying me low for over three months.

With nearly a third of the year wiped out I took the opportunity to journal more (prompted in part by The Artists Way), and reading through the notes it was a lot to do with viewing those aforementioned negative experiences through a learning lens. In doing so they have faded in their potency and formed into unintended gifts, integrated into a more rounded world-view and a result of being (proudly) bold, because at the end of the day who wants to be mundane‽

ONE MILLION VIEWS

1000000 TEDx Talks Achieved - justadandak.com

This astounding numerical threshold was reached early February and if you missed it, check out the How To Get One Million Views On Your TEDx Talk blog piece which might help you or someone you know who’s in the same position.

Thanks for the support / watches / sharing-on and I still crack a bemused smile knowing my talk is featured on ted.com.

CLIENTS

Deep gratitude to those who were generous enough to explore a collaborative relationship this year—I truly tried hard to add positive value in all my interactions and delivery for every single one of you:

It was a healthy mix of creative producing and speaker coaching via my masterclasses / workshops / consulting plus there were over a half a dozen one-to-one humans (not featured in the list above) who trusted me to aid crafting their stories with them.

Thank you!

WINDY WELLY

wellington, new-zealand-map - justadandak.com — Made via MapCanvas

Since my return to the capital of New Zealand early this year my summary of the mood and feel in Wellington is scarcity.

Justifiable for the administrative center of the country due to austerity measures from the new conservative government, the massive public sector job cuts plus the same said leadership slashing community driven things along with fracturing societal / cultural gains. Add that to the continued global polycrisis stripping levity from anyone with a degree of intellect and empathy, the rise of technofeudalism (see video below), the migration of 50,000 souls last year, then scarcity is more than understandable:

Paradoxically though, I ended the year feeling full of gratitude and swank on the red carpet at the NZ premiere of Avatar: Fire and Ash. A wonderful experience full of sunshine, optimism (aligned to my ‘hope generator’ speech from 2019 TEDxWellington) and bouyancy.

Avatar Fire & Ash Wellington Dec 2025 premiere – red carpet view

Much like other hopeful things happening / I’ve noticed / participated in since my return:

WellyForge: founded by Ralph Higham with the aim to bring the tech community together in this monthly showcase evening gathering;
Goodlife Collective: a soul-filling initiative led by Freda Wells with the goal to build connection, agency, and our collective potential;
Creative Mornings, Wellington: attended a couple of these and apart from the timing it’s always good to be surrounded by curious-minded humans;
TEDxWellington: my ‘alma mater’ have plans to kick off with some studio talks next year after a quiet 2025.

So if opportunity allows I’d like to stay and contribute to the growing need for creative action in this fair city and beyond.

Which leads to my…

ATTENTION

HATCH 20th group image — The impressive group of HATCH 2024 humans.

Inspired by last years HATCH 20th anniversary experience, the question “what are you attending to?” has been like a thought-refrain, and has aided my understanding of where distractions have taken root.

With that in mind and after 16 years, I divested from LinkedIn, which followed on from me stopping tweetmailing last year, and to add to this I turned off all the stats relating to this website (and others).

I can’t stop my hunger for digital wonderment and it continues to feed my monthly digital breadcrumbs posts (on which I’ve had some positive feedback recently from several sources), although I find myself purposefully seeking out more creative fuel instead of the current dire news cycle.

Moving on from bothersome past conversations / experiences is more of a challenge, however, I’ve had some success by formulating competing and more compelling positive discourses / visions.

Once distractions are out of the way a juicier question reveals itself: what is your…

INTENTION

Archie Moore, ‘kith and kin’ exhibition at QAGOMA - justadandak.com — Own shot taken at the arresting Archie Moore, ‘kith and kin’ exhibition at QAGOMA

Personally, my spirit delights in intentionality—deliberate actions and causal intent are becoming drivers for my own imagination as I reorient the souls audaciousness into inviting new chapters.

My purpose still remains fixed:

I’m driven to enable people find and have voice.

This obviously manifests in my speaker / story coaching and all the activities around that (hoping to get a few more ‘impact courses’ sold in the coming year and do a lot more masterclasses / talks / coaching), although the creative producing side of things is morphing into daring new business plans.

All this will manifest through the…

2026 THEME : CREATIVE ABUNDANCE

Evening star (Washington, D.C.), November 23, 1923 - creative abundance - justadandak.com — Via Evening star (Washington, D.C.), November 23, 1923 / Library of Congress

The aim is to bring this spirit into my discussions (both internally and externally) and use it as fuel to drive action (in myself and others).

I’ll soon be sharing a multi-year research / thinking / iteration project around human creativity and productivity for organisations / companies and in doing so, quiet my inner disparager and tease out the wilting confidence which has been damaged from the previous years experience.

A personal example of this is my dedication to:

ASEMIC WRITING

This year I (re)discovered an artistic practice.

I have been creating calligraphic expressions of my mood for decades as throwaway doodles and scribbles.

I then discovered not only is it a artistic form but also a enchanting use of my time.

These offerings bypass expected semantic reasoning and align to the emotive range of my / your inner state(s). There is still structure although only used as a constraint in which to liberate my imagination.

For me, this practice of mark-making is intentionally post-literate and gestural in its composition, defined by a rhythmic cascade utilising the following classification:

“Asemic writing is closer to art than to writing. The word “asemic” comes from the same root as the word “semantic”, i.e., that which is a-semic has no semantic meaning. Artists who engage in asemic writing attempt to create forms that look like letters, pictographs, or other meaning-marks without themselves carrying any significance. The results can look at first glance like anything, from a foreign script to an alien crop circle to a geometric diagram to an illegible set of scribbled notes.”
Via On Asemic Writing: The Art of Meaning Beyond Syntax

I have created many hundred of pieces since giving myself the permission to shake off classical communication expectations and instead trust in the process of sitting, being, creating.

What is created is an invitation to explore and allow any understanding on my / your own terms, or if not, in the attempt the success has occurred anyway.

Watch this space.

BLOGGED

These are blog posts offered up in 2025:

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SO…

…the aim is to cultivate a bias towards creative abundance, be deeply intentional about the conversations I have, the energy I devote to things and to whom.

So what about you my lovelies, what’s been the highlights / lowlights / lessons / intentions…?