Some reflections, hopes, and plans for 2025

And looking back on how I did in 2024

2024 has wrapped! Last year, I wrote this post that had my reflections for 2023 and my hopes for 2024. I remember watching a CGPGrey video forever ago where he discussed how he would set goals, record his doings with regards to those goals, and have periodic check-ins and audits to see how he was progressing on them¹. I figured that, just as Janus looks forward and back, this post is a good opportunity for me to look back on my 2024 goals and use my progress (however limited or grand) to springboard into 2025’s goals. After all, I learned a lot from trying to tackle every goal on last year’s list. Even—or, rather, especially—from those that I failed on.

But first, let’s just talk a bit about what happened in 2024.

2024

General review…

I’ve told a few folks that 2024 has been one of the better years we’ve had as a family over the last five or so. However, reflecting on it objectively, it’s a “high mean, high variance year.” A lot of high-highs, low-lows, swings between languid peace and intense stress. I’ll lead with some of those stressful lows first. (I like to end on a good note).

• At the start of the year, my wife’s car needed its transmission replaced. Not only did that put us out about 5 grand, The replacement experienced multiple delays that would up making it take about 5 weeks to complete. During this time, because of my wife’s work schedule and my daughter’s daycare pick-up/drop-off timing, I would often spend about 3 hours a day on the road ferrying someone to somewhere on top of working my normal job.
• In April, our wonderfully sweet greyhound, Dude, went to the rainbow bridge. We’re grateful that his downturn was relatively quick and that we were able to be with him at the end to help make his final moments calm and peaceful. It was my daughter’s first experience with death; she adored Dude and it hit her hard. Shit, it wasn’t my wife and I’s first experience with death and it still hit us hard. But, as they say, grief is but love with nowhere to go. And we at least felt² solace in the depth of the love we had for him.
• Every member of the family had at least one ER visit this year. My daughter broke her arm, my wife had intense pain mimicking a heart attack, then later this year I had intense pain that mimicked a heart attack.³
• The election was this year and, despite no longer being professionally obligated to feel involved, I—of course—became very emotionally involved. Which meant feeling anxious about it. Between Biden LBJ’ing, multiple Trump assassination attempts, the general media insanity that transpires whenever Trump is anywhere within a nautical mile of the spotlight…it was a lot! As I said on Twitter (before I quit it a few weeks back): “I would just like one goddamn week where I’m not worried about the fate of my country please just one solitary fucking week.” Alas…
• My wife had spinal surgery to remedy the root of the pain issue that we discovered after her trip to the ER. Cue months of being out of work and physical recovery. The hardest part, she’s told me, was that she wasn’t allowed to lift our daughter for weeks because of the weight restrictions.
• We had a million surprises like dead car batteries, messed up engine pistons, plumber visits, etc. Also, two hurricanes that hit within a couple weeks of each other?!

So, yeah, in many ways 2024 could’ve gone better. But, in a million ways, it did!

• Rose is growing into an incredible kid. She’s smart, kind, considerate, goofy, funny, curious—and so much more. She recovered from a broken bone in record time this year and is healthy and happy. Every day is a gift and I’ll never crack how I got lucky enough to be her dad.
• My wife’s quality of life is tremendously better after her neck surgery. Her previous pain was so tough that the discomfort of recovery was only a fraction of what she was dealing with. As she’s recovered, she’s regained so much of her ability to do things.
• We managed to visit my family in California twice this year: Once for my grandfather’s 90th birthday in January and again for Thanksgiving and my nephew’s wedding!⁴ Both of these were tremendously joyous visits and I’m grateful for the time I got to spend there. In general, I spent more time with family this year than last, which I’m very glad for.
• There were some health issues that I had been putting off paying the piper on. Those all came back ok! (Seriously, wear your fucking sunscreen). Apart from the last few weeks of figuring out what’s been going on with my chest, I’ve actually been really healthy and active in 2024. That health and strength allowed me to run 30k to celebrate turning 30 as well as help my family out with some renovations and help neighbors out after the hurricanes. And my state of health is making me bounce back faster than I would’ve otherwise if I hadn’t resolved to work on my fitness.
• My brother got engaged, a best friend and his wife announced that they were having a baby, and an old friend from high school got married (and also announced that he was having a baby!). Just so much love and joy going on all around us.
• One of my best friends, Evan, finally managed to fly out to Florida to hang out with us and meet Rose. I had last seen him in person at my wedding! (Though I talk to him almost every day thanks to the miracle of cell phones and Xbox Live).
• Just a few weeks later, we saw Evan again along with a few other friends as we geeked out at Anime Expo LA! We spent days immersed in one of our favorite nerdy hobbies. I even cosplayed 2 of the days! Not to mention going to Universal Studios Hollywood (sort of makes it count as a work trip, right?) as well as the La Brea Tar Pits!
• I managed to continue doing some survey and statistical consulting work this year for some organizations that do some serious good in the world. And I managed to do it with the help of one of my best friends! Not just that, we’re doing even more work with them—and others!—in 2025!
• After years of going “haha wow, I sure seem to relate to all of these memes about ADHD what a curious coincidence” I went ahead and saw a psychiatrist. You’ll never guess what she said!⁵
• Work has not only been mentally engaging, with loads of opportunities to learn new things, but it’s been emotionally rewarding. I work with a bunch of kind, smart people who help bring out my best work. And they’ve been amazing in their flexibility given everything that’s happened. I’m grateful to be working at UDX.
• I built my own PC! I’m actually writing this from the new beast!
• Just last week, after weeks of talking it through, we added a new member to our family: Xena. She’s a sweet 3-year old Catahoula Leopard Dog who loves exercise, cuddles, and attention. Which is great because, like, so do I!

And there were also a zillion moments of everyday joy sprinkled throughout the year. So, yes, 2024 was hard. A good chunk of it sucked. If allowed to line-item veto parts of it, there are definitely some experiences that would be on the chopping block. But, alas, we don’t get to be that selective—you’ve got to take the good with the bad. And there’s been so much good that, to me, the bad is pretty thoroughly outweighed. And I think that the vast majority of the bad is largely transitory. I won’t get to “leave it all in 2024”—some of it will carry into the first few months of the year as we sort things out. But it won’t be sticking around past that. The theme of this year is “upward trend”. Sometimes trends are noisy; sampled points bounce around a bit high and a bit low—but the trajectory is up. I hope to keep that going.

Resolution performance

So here’s the awkward thing: A lot of my resolutions last year used very specific numbers to make them something accomplishable. I’m often hard on myself: a goal like “be kinder to others” will falter before the biased scrutiny of my recollection. Something measureable like “do at least 50 kind actions this year” gives me a target. The numbers were ambitious but I made them with the idea that any value greater than 0 was something worth celebrating.

Excellent—all great in theory. The problem is that it presupposes that I’d successfully keep track of everything well enough to be able to accurately judge how close I’d gotten to the ambitious target. Remember the whole “diagnosed with ADHD” thing? One of the things that made me go “you know, maybe I should see someone about all this” was the fact that I went through at least 4 tracking systems this year. Each time I’d not only fail to keep up with it, causing censored data, I’d chuck the baby out with the bathwater whenever I made a transition to a new system and delete all of the records used by the past systems. Why? Fuck if I know! Embarrassment at another failed personal initative? dAtA iNtEgRiTy? Laziness? Clean slate falacy? I don’t know. I’m just hoping that the system I have going now is adaptable enough that I won’t make the same boneheaded mistakes.⁶

In any case, I only have hunches for many of them. Fortunately, they’re relativley educated hunches.

1. Ingest 100 books. Probably got pretty close on this. I got 12 books on Libby, 17 on Audible, 11 on Spotify plus at least ten “real” books over the course of the year. Then there was the manga. A lot of manga. Easily 60 volumes of Manga.

2. Listen to 200 new-to-me albums. As long as EPs count, definitely got close. It’s only 4 a week. Though it was probably less of the blowout I expected.

3. Check in to Duolingo 100 times. This one I actually know for a fact I succeeded on. I had a 115 day streak at one point!

4. Play 10-15 new games. If I count games that I dropped and played in a multiplayer capacity, I hit a bit over 20. Limited to “new” games puts me at about 15.

5. Learn to cook 10-15 new recipes. Meh. Probably got 5 new ones in the rotation if I’m being honest. But I tweaked a bunch of old faves to be more healthy and have more veggies per serving.

6. Watch 10-15 new-to-me movies. Almost assuredly, but the vast majority are kids movies playing in the background while I cook. Others, though, were Oppenhiemer. Which, goddamn, what a film.

7. Watch 20-30 new/new-to-me TV seasons. The good news is I definitely hit this. The bad news is that it’s 90% anime. Whatever. Gomenasai for being a weeb, I guess.

8. Ingest 50 documentaries/podcasts. I got back into watching educational YouTubers so I definitely hit this one. Though I want to be better about podcasts.

9. Keep my weight between 150-160lbs. 153.8 checking in!

10. Run 1200 miles. Nope! Not even close! But I have hit some good performances this last year.

11. Visit the gym 50 times. I probably got to about 30 but a bunch of those were in months 7-10 of the year…which may be why the cartilage in my chest got inflamed.

12. Do 25 sessions of Yoga. I cleared this pretty well! I now do Yoga about 5/7 mornings if I had to guess.

13. Do 100 sessions of core. Here too, I got close but put way too much into too compressed a time period. Like, If I count my core exercises as a “workout” I had multiple weeks of 2-3 workouts a day for 5-6 days a week. That shit’s just not sustainable anymore. I have to cut down responsibly to build back up.

14. Run one race with a performance I’m proud out. I entered 0 races this year! But I had numerous time trials where I hit very respectable performances (including a 17:06 3 mile on Thanksgiving morning).

15. Write 25-30 issues of Pulse of the Polis. Ooooof. No. Try 5.

16. Write 20 pieces of non-PotP content. Ehhh maybe 10. I actually wrote some poetry that I’m not too upset with. I’m trying to re-kajigger the blog to be better for writing less involved pieces.

17. Write 50 diary entries. Maybe got to about 25 here.

18. Post 50 things of value on LinkedIn. Nope! I made about 25 posts this year many that were shitposts! Oh well. There’s value even in cubic zirconia, right?

19. Attend at least one Quaker meeting. Nope. My moniker as “bad quaker” continues!

20 Make 5-10 videos. I actually wrote 3 scripts but couldn’t make time to record any. So, nope!

21. Contribute to/make 3 open source projects. I’ve made 2! Though one is available right now, still working out the kinks in the second.

22. Do 5-10 DIY projects. Ok, definitely did this—especially if you count projects at other people’s houses. I helped my folks a lot with renovations and projects this year so that I can pick up on techniques and such for my own stuff down the line.

23. Have 15-20 coffee chats with long-distance friends new and old. 15 may be a stretch but I definitely had a lot of coffee chats with folks trying to break into DS and such. And that was some of the most rewarding experiences I had in 2024. So I very much want to keep doing that!

Honestly, I thought these were going to wind up worse than they did! In fact, I’m so bouyed by this that I’m going to let most of these ride into 2025. Though with a few alterations.

2025 Goals.

Intangible goals

I know that I mentioned that I needed to lean on measurable goals because avoiding them meant opening myself up the asshole critic that is my future self. However, some things simply can’t be articulated well as an OKR; some things deserve more than to be conjoined with a number.

One of the big things on my mind after 2 ER visits this year is my health. I joked with folks that 30 wasn’t supposed to mean this much bodily breakdown. But it wasn’t a joke—it’s not meant to be this much breakdown! But do you know what does erode a body? Stress! Shit sleep! Demanding too much of myself both bodily and mentally!

I’ve realized that I’ve been operating under the implicit assumption that my health and endurance is functionally limitless—that I can break through any wall and come out the other side. But the thing about walls is that they’re fucking hard. Break through too many walls and the only way you’ll keep getting through them is as a gelatinous blob seeping through the cracks.

I still have the vision for my life that I had last year—the long-term impression of what I want my life to look like by 40. But I’m now really appreciating that if I even want to get there I have no other choice but to stop treating my body as an instrument of my will but as me—literally embodied. My limbs, lungs, and lymbic system are not tools to be wielded in the service of my aspirations—they are what the aspirations are intending to serve. So, instead, I’m trying to think of it as “managing” or “directing” my body. Not just barking orders, but taking feedback; reaching a shared end-goal, operating as an effective, synergistic system rather than as a petty despot sprinting forward into self-sabotage. And, also, finally actually going to therapy.

Another intangible goal is to be more involved in my communities. I’ve mentioned before that I got very invested in the 2024 election: I’ll make no secret of the fact that it did not go as I wanted it to. However, it did force a realization upon me: The world is not how I wish it was. As a single person, there’s no way that I could force it to be how I want it. But there are parts of the world that I can at least influence; I can do things to help make the small slices that I occupy how I wish the macroscopic world to be. A place of kindness, generosity, patience, and peace.

That said, there are also measurable goals. You’ll notice many of them are copies of last year. Some have a few modifications in the face of what I’ve learned this year. Mainly, I’m just hoping I’ll keep better track of it all than last year!

Measurable goals

1. Ingest 100 books (manga, comics, and Great Courses count).
2. Listen to 200 new-to-me albums
3. Check in to Duolingo 150 times with a streak at least 50 days long.
4. Play 10-15 new games (board/tabletop games count)
5. Learn to cook 10-15 new recipes/foods (new cooking techniques to rehash old recipes count)
6. Watch 15-20 new-to-me movies
7. Watch 20-30 new/new-to me TV seasons. At least 5 involving flesh and blood humans.
8. Ingest 50 documentaries (YouTube videos and podcasts count if longer than 30 minutes on a single topic).
9. Keep my weight between 150-160lbs. Bring my body fat percentage down below 14%.
10. Have at least 30 weeks where I run more than 30 miles in that week.
11. Visit the gym an average of 2-3 times a week.
12. Average 20 sessions of Yoga a month.
13. Average 2 sessions of core per week.
14. Run one race with a performance I’m proud of.
15. Write 15-20 issues of Pulse of the Polis.
16. Write 20-30 pieces of non-PotP content (blog posts, reviews, white/working papers, tutorials, poetry, micro-fiction, whatsver. So long as it took some effort to write).
17. Write 50 daily dairy entries.
18. Post 20 things of value to others on LinkedIn.
19. Attend at least one Quaker Meeting.
20. Make 1 video.
21. Contribute to/make 3 open source/code projects.
22. Make 5-10 things that physically exist (e.g., legos, home repairs, digital art that I would or do hang in my house).
23. Have 15-20 coffee chats with long-distance friends new and old (actually seeing them counts too).
24. Log at least 20 hours practicing drumming.

And implicit in all of these is to actually maintain a logging system that helps me achieve all of these goals. I like what I have going at the moment but, ya know, we’ll see.

Happy New Year folks.

Footnotes

1. Not to imply that Grey created this system or anything. People have been doing this for centuries—America’s most famous and beloved historical example is probably good ol’ Ben “Hundred Dolla bill” Franklin tracking his 13 virtues. Grey’s video is just the one that made the idea appealing enough for me that it made this something I wanted to do. Even if, as we’ll see here in a bit, I haven’t exactly mastered it yet.

2. I’m saying this in the past tense as if it still doesn’t gut us. But it does. We miss him every day.

3. Fortunately, none of us actually had heart attacks. In my wife’s case, it ultimately helped uncover a nerve issue with her spine that I’ll talk about in a bit. And, in mine, we’re still doing the final tests but it appears that I had two independent sources of chest pain that are both known to mimic heart attack symptoms. A sudden bout of stubborn, long-lasting, and painful gastric reflux and inflamation of the cartialage between my ribs—likely brought on through a combination of stress and over-exercise.

4. You want a surefire way to fill up with both gratitude and the sinking feeling of getting older? Watch your brother’s kids start graduating and getting married! What the hell man, I’ve only just turned 30 this year!

5. You will absolutely guess what she said.

6. I’m amazed at how many of my personal and professional life’s challenges can be boiled down to imperfect data collection.