Reflections and Lofty Goals
to making 2025 a year of achievement, passion, love, and building an overall enjoyable life
I started this Substack originally with the general purpose of having somewhere to write down my goals, my progress, and how I was moving towards where I want to be. That is what I’m going to continue to do going into 2025, and I’m going to continue to try new things, experiment with processes, document successes and failures, and generally just be open and unapologetic about my progress towards building the life I dream for myself.
2024: Reflections
Overall, 2024 was a year of rediscovery for me. Between losing my spark and passion while with my ex-wife, then surviving the pandemic shutdowns and years of recovery (still in progress, let us all be honest), 2024 was when I finally started really feeling like I was able to grow some new growth in my life in a way that felt tangible.
January
Starting the year off strong, I celebrated my birthday with loved ones and my birthday twin (shoutout Erik!)
February
Acquired a bunch of new seeds to try growing in the garden this year, and made kale chips for the first time in a while
March
Started my garden seedling and got a new tattoo!
April
Decluttered a slightly ridiculous number of squishmallows, watched my seedlings grow into real little plants, and built some Lego sets with my daughter.
May
Saw the Stardew Valley: Festival of Seasons concert in Montreal, and proposed to my beautiful (now) fiancée!
June
Had my busted up and broken down backyard pool finally dug out, removed, and re-filled with soil. Additionally, said my final goodbyes to my grandfather out in British Columbia, which also included seeing one of the oldest trees in Canada (over 800 years old!)
July
Started getting real harvests from my garden - mostly just tomatoes and cucumber.
August
Saw Ice Nine Kills and In This Moment in Buffalo with my fiancée.
September
Was in the wedding party for my best friend’s wedding, and we finished repainting and upgrading the clothing storage in the bedroom. My fiancée and I also went to Texas for a week to see a Longhorns game, meet some long-time online friends, and generally tourist about.
October
Started going to the gym relatively consistently, and make my first loaves of homemade bread! I also got to see the Northern Lights for the first time ever, which was pretty neat.
November
Made my first major crafting project of the last several years (a love-based advent calendar for my fiancée) and started fiddling with sourdough starter.
December
Made a metric ton (exaggerated) of cookies for the various holiday hang outs, get togethers, and celebrations of the month, and finalized the 2024 decluttering challenge!
2025: Aspirations
My word for the year is going to be Passion.
There are a lot of things I want to build on and get better at this year, and there’s also a lot that is already scheduled to happen. In keeping with my attempt at quarterly / 12 week planning that I started in the last 3 months of 2024, I am still looking at the year in quarters.
However, I’m going to break it down a little bit further for 2025 and introduce the concept of “cycles”. The premise is this: Each quarter has 13 weeks (3 months + 1 reset week), which adds up to 52 weeks in total. Each quarter will also have a general trend or focus, which is further broken down in the cycles.
I haven’t decided on all of my quarters or focuses for each part of the year yet - I just know that I will be keeping the concept of passion at the forefront of it.
For Quarter 1, my focus will be “fuel and heal”.
Why? Simply because… January 8th I’m going for surgery to get my hernia(s) repaired. The recovery period for that is 6-8 weeks where I cannot do any heavy lifting at all (think recovering from a caesarean section, except without all that “cutting through the abdominal muscles” part). So until at least March, I’m going to be taking it easy - at least physically.
But I can fuel myself: body, mind, and soul. I plan to read, write, listen, and walk. A lot of walking. Because otherwise I might go stir crazy.
Cycle 1 of Quarter 1 has the following specific goals:
eat at least one serving of fruit and/or vegetable with each meal
read 4 books
go on an intentional date with my fiancee
write at least 2-3 essays/posts/blogs/whatever - finished content
listen to 40 podcast episodes
get 10k steps per day (except for the day of surgery, and 1-2 days after)
spent 0$ on non-essentials
Should be easy enough, right?
I also have some lofty financial goals, intentional living goals, and more. But that’s for a later post…
Until next time, loves x
