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.
Collected /now updates
Read
- Building Optimism: Why Our World Looks the Way it Does, and How to Make it Better by Coby Lefkowitz - I've been a fan of Coby since he started daily posting positive examples of good American development on Twitter. I love his perspective, optimisim, and the action he's taking to make the built world a better place.
- Jackson Rising Redux: Lessons on Building the Future in the Present, which is a collection of essays about Cooperation Jackson and similar projects around the country focused on the solidarity economy, with a focus on Black self-determination. Very inspiring read so far.
- Laziness Does Not Exist - good follow-up to Quit and it helped cope with my guilt over not being more productive with my free time
- Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away - I kind of took the opposite of the advice from this book. I tend to quit most things too easily, so I welcomed the insight into why or why not to quit.
- Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle - this is specifically written for a female audience, but there's plenty of useful advice for any gender
- Confessions of a Recovering Engineer: Transportation for a Strong Town by Charles L Marohn - started but didn't finish this
- Doing Good Better and excited to apply it to my life
Watched
- Arcane season 2 and Spy x Family
- Latest season of Taskmaster and Taskmaster Kids
- YouTube: FD Signifire (leftist video essays), HasanAbi (leftist political news), Rick Glassman (comedic interview podcast), MartijnDoolaard (beautifully shot videos of the process of restoring and living in a stone cabin in the Italian Alps)
- Rings of Power season 2 (it is boring and I dislike so many of the writing choices, but there's a kernal of greatness)
- Delicious in Dungeon season one (with my daughter who now loves it too)
- LEGO Masters: Australia season 2 - only got halfway through before abandoning out of boredom
- Tried to get into Taskmaster: Australia season 2, but didn't really pull me in like the original
- Tokyo Vice - really enjoyed it, despite the allegations against the lead actor
- Rewatched Dune and Dune 2 - very cinematic, even though I couldn't hear half of what was being whispered
- Adored everyone on Love on the Spectrum season 2
- Thoroughly enjoyed Blue Eye Samurai
Played
- Beat most of Wildfrost
- Finished God of War: Ragnorak - really enjoyed the world but felt like the story went on too long
- Burnt out on Path of Exile (excited for PoE2!)
- Jumped back into Brotato and the DLC
- Leveled many characters to max in Diablo IV seasons
- Tried out Spiritfarer - very cool, but didn't hook me
- Got hooked on Balatro for like a week (great Steam Deck game)
- Finished Ghost of Tsushima - one of my favorite games of all time!
- Put many hours into My Time at Sandrock
- Redownloaded Hades for the Steam Deck
- Restarted Baldur's Gate 3 campaign for the 3rd time