Taking inspiration from Ryan Boone, the following is a list of 2024 failures and accomplishments, and goals for 2025.
2024 Goals
I only had two goals for last year, but they were both pretty big. Like most people who set New Years resolutions, I was really focused on them to start the year, but completely lost steam after a few months. I’m forgiving myself for that though, because I was dealing with a lot. We had just moved across the country to a new city and state. My daughter received her diagnosis as neurodivergent. I was trying to build up an advocacy group around biking and walking. At the same time, I was still adjusting to having a corporate job at the biggest company I’d ever worked for.
Plus, I had been ignoring a lot of early childhood issues that were turning into a mid-life crisis and frankly, I needed help. I started consistently attending therapy in 2024 and it was such a huge change for me. I cut some things out my life, namely blogging and advocacy, to focus on self care.
- ❌ Publish at least 12 posts on my blog. While I fell significantly short of my goal, I still managed to publish four posts last year and seven updates to my now page. I also made progress on numerous draft posts that I would like to finish someday. I think what blocked me the most, other than the aforementioned business, is that I got stuck on a particularly long post about why I moved to Carmel. In retrospect, I should have skipped it and moved on to finish other posts. But at the time, I felt like I was so close to finishing it, I shouldn’t put effort into anything else.
- ✅ Get a small win with urbanist advocacy. Although I did dial it back on organizing and attending things this year, we still ended up with a major win: the multi-purpose trail that Riley and I championed got officially picked up by the city and is being planned to get started in 2025! It’s being called The Autumn Trail and might even get some extra segments connected. Most of the work in getting this started is thanks to Riley and all the work they did documenting the problem and the solution. Thanks to Council-member Snyder who helped connect us with the Parks Department and the Engineering Department and get it funded as part of a group of bonds at the end of 2024.
2025 Goals
For the next year, I’m excited to continue building from where I left off.
- Publish 6 blog posts. While not aiming as high, I’m still trying to push myself to publish more than I did last year.
- Make tangible progress in real estate development. I don’t know what this means yet. I’d love to lead the development of my own project, but I don’t feel ready for that, financially or mentally. Instead, I’m planning to volunteer with HAND, a non-profit here in Indiana focused on building affordable housing in my county. I’ve already attended an incremental real estate development workshop earlier this year. I’ve been studying lessons from Strong Towns and City Nerd and every other urbanist YouTuber or blogger for many years. I want to help connect the people and ideas that I’ve been learning together into something actionable. I think I’m most interested in advocating for policy change, so I’ll see where that leads me.