First off, I hope you all had and are having a happy, healthy holiday season.

Secondly I want to thank you, all of you who sent money into my New York Cares Coat Drive this year.

We reached new highs. At the moment we are in the lead by over five thousand dollars. And outside of Evercore my constant rival, no group or person is even close.

I would not be able to do this year after year without the kindness and generosity of many of you.  You know who you are.

I could do a real wrap up of this year.  It was quite the year.   But my inclination is to not do that. There is no need.

I’ve been writing a version of this blog since Taylor was a senior in high school. She is now six months from her thirty-fourth birthday.

The original blog was Called Freshman Mom. The year was 2008, maybe the tail end of 2007. You can do the math. OK, I will save you the math.  It’s eighteen years.

It was so long ago, when I started I mailed it out through  Gmail. I remember there was a limit of 300 people you could BCC before it was deemed as SPAM.  Some of you, many of you, on that early list are still here. You have no idea how grateful I am for your loyalty.

The site has been through two facelifts and you all have been through an eyelift and a facelift with me. You have seen me through sending off my oldest to college and then my youngest. We’ve been through a pandemic. A host of Presidents. Housing booms. Busts. Stockmarket crash. Stockmarket rise. Wars galore. It’s been a raucous  almost twenty years.

When Taylor went  off to college I was Freshman Mom,   Lucy was still home and entering the fourth grade. I was Freshman mom and fourth grade mom at the same time.  How lucky was I?

Lucy was married this last September. Taylor has been married for almost two years. Our nest is very empty.

You have seen me through the travails with my parents, the making up with my parents. The death of my parents. The death of so many friends. And the triumphs of so many others. You’ve traveled with us. Eaten with us. Mourned and celebrated.

You’ve hung in there when I’m cranky, angry, ecstatic, funny- funny is what I normally shoot for. But life often moves the target.

During these years, I’ve produced and directed a documentary, written two books, had a podcast, sold a pilot, been on Oprah and god knows what else I have bragged about  since I started this.

I was deep in Bollywood, wrote about recovery in Gratitude and Trust with Paul Williams; that has its own website. Now archival. At one point I was running both sites at the same time.

I’ve been high and low. I’ve been funny and sad. Though all of it, my aim was and remains to always be – me.  Not the idealized version, the real one.

If I were to be a brand, which I have never had the skill to actually pull off, nor am I sure I had the desire: But if I had wanted it, or gone after it,  authenticity would have been the core.

My goal is and has always been to let people know they are not alone. That if I am feeling it, if I am going through it, others are too.

I was blogging pre Instagram. And god knows pre SubStack. I was doing “To Buy” lists, where to go lists. In some ways I was Instagramming pre Instagram. Many bloggers were.  We just didn’t have a name for it.

I was forty-eight years old  when I started this and in six months I will be sixty-seven.

I have memorialized so much of my life and feelings  in almost two decades of musings.

I have written one thousand one hundred and sixty blogs on this site alone. If the average blog is fifteen hundred words, I’ve written one million seven hundred and forty words.

Tracey talked a lot.

There were nights I’d write  for my day job all day, come home and blog deep into the night. When we traveled I always missed breakfast so I could get out a blog.

There were nights Lucy wanted me to lie with her as she fell asleep and I was busy writing. Now I wish I had stopped and gone in and spent the time with her.

I spent a lot. One can always spend more.  But I’m working towards a point here.

At forty-eight you can attempt to do everything you want. At sixty-six, sixty-seven ( between us my age will not be going backwards) time becomes more precious.

And as the internet tugs on the strings of our attention twenty four seven it all becomes too much. I’m so overwhelmed by all that is thrust at me it’s hard to be productive.

In some ways I think Substack is the last straw for me.

There  are really good people on Substack, but there are so many who are not good. There are so many out there who are not writers who just jam the highways of our minds with their words and opinions.

I’ve been writing since I was fourteen. I have two hundred journals. Yes, while I was writing for dollars and doing this blog I’ve been journaling since I was fourteen.

My life is deeply recorded. Not all of it legibly. Not all of it grammatical, but it’s there.

Though for the moment, or forever, as one does not know what the future holds, I am officially saying good-bye to Tracey Talks.

It’s hard to do. Obviously the output has become less and less. And thanks to  endless talks with Patricia Belen who I could have never done this without, we decided it might be time to say good-bye.

I do not want to be one more voice drowning in  sea of voices. I do not want to write about politics  during the next four years and if I have a platform, I am not sure how I will avoid it.

Today I finished a book, I want to share with all of you.  It’s called 4000 Weeks, Time Management for Mortals. Written by Oliver Burkeman.

Do yourself a favor and buy it.  It’s a great way to start out the new year.

The premise is, the average person lives to be eighty. That’s taking freak accidents, infant mortality and centigenarians into account.

If you go by that number, the average person will get  4000 weeks on planet earth.  Burkeman asks the question, How do you want to spend them?

At my age if we go by his math I have six hundred and seventy six weeks left. Now that may sound like a lot to you, but it does not sound like a ton to me. In terms of holidays, it’s 13 more Christmases. 13 more coat drives. 13 more summers.

And let’s face it, a percentage of those are not peak performance weeks.

If we get a bit more optimistic here, my mother got to 91, my dad got to 92 and my grandmother got to 87. So we could toss me an extra  eight (not to be greedy) and that gives me  around 1400 weeks.

Or the fickle finger of fate could decide to end it sooner and  run me over by a stoned, speeding, GrubHub delivering bicyclist at 70 which could leave me with only 156 weeks until I depart.

I’m not being macabre, but that is also what this book is about. How we cannot control time, we can only control how we use our time, while never knowing how much of it we actually have.

After thinking about my life and what I want to do, blogging is not at the forefront. If it were I’d be doing a lot more of it. Ive done it for close to 20 years.It’s like when I walked away from Hollywood, I did for twenty-five years.  I seem to have a shelf life with things.

I want to write my memoir. It’s begging me to write it. I wake up at four am and pages fall out of my brain onto the pillow.

I want to do more philanthropy. I want to spend time with my girls and their families.I want to travel with Glenn while we still have the energy and desire. I want to spend quality time with my friends.

I want to read more. I want to take classes in design at the Interior Design School. I want to workout five days a week. I want to be present for those who need me and present for myself, in this last quarter.

You never know, I may be back. I remain on Instagram, doing videos and postings. @traceydjackson

Still chatty after all these years.

You will all still stay in the database.

The site will be up and archival.

Patricia  had to turn off comments this month due to some Korean bots getting in and leaving 40 comments a day for months and I couldn’t take it.

Ive started out 2025 unsubscribing from so many sites. So many blogs. So many stores. When you start counting weeks, you don’t want to spend hours a week tossing things into spam, junk and going through the hassle of unsubscribing.

I am down to Apple News and The Atlantic. I get The NY Times for special articles and the recipes.

I took Facebook off my phone. I never use Tik Tok. I do have a fondness for Instagram.

I do not need every store I have ever thought about buying something from sending me an email or text every day.

So, consider  this my holiday gift to you.

You don’t have to unsubscribe.   If I really have something to say, I will say it. But I may just lie down until the urge passes.

For now…..

I thank you all for being loyal.  While my list has never been huge, it’s insanely dependable, I have an open rate of 55%.   Which is beyond high in blogging terms.

And that is thanks to all of you.

Happy 2025.  Enjoy your weeks. Enjoy your days. Enjoy your minutes.They go fast. They are unpredictable. But they are yours, use them wisely. And you will have few regrets.

Always,

Tracey

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