the annual: "follow-through."
wednesday, january 1st, 2025.
Hello, and welcome to the dawn of a new year! Well, okay— the crack of noon. 😅
Around this time every year, I review how things went and pick a theme for my aspirations for the upcoming year. Here's the ones I've done so far:
This year's theme will be the "follow-through." I've started my journey creating a bicycling advocacy group, plus I've started a few hobbies that I'd really like to continue to get better at. My hope for the upcoming year is that I follow through with the promises that I make, implicit or otherwise, and generally make stuff happen.
2024 in review.
What an awesome year it's been! It's been filled with a lot of bicycling, of course. The theme I picked last year, "community," fit aptly. I've been to most of the city council meetings last year, gotten myself appointed on a transportation committee, been cycling with a group most Wednesdays and Saturdays, and started playing Flesh & Blood with the armory community at the local game store. In brief, I've made a lot of friends and gotten to know some great people!
Here's the goals I set for myself in last year's annual:
- Keep up the cycling and see if I can hit 2,000 miles.
- Get quality sleep. I really thrive with "early to bed, early to rise."
- Eat well. More veggies and less snacking.
- Abstain from things that make me feel crappy: alcohol, social media, etc.
- Read more. At least 15 books, preferably!
- Maintain my environment responsibly, same as last year.
- Be kind to myself and those around me. Don't let cynicism hold me down.
- Say "yes" more— stretch the envelope and have some ad hoc adventures!
- Say "no" when I need to— don't put too much on my plate.
I think I fared better on these goals than I did those of the previous year! I actually managed to hit 2,500 miles on my bicycle, which is pretty rad.
Sleep was fair-to-middling. For the most part, I wound up going to sleep at around 10:30pm and waking at 6:30am or 7:00am, but there were definitely stretches (especially during the holidays!) where I burned the candles at both ends. Generally, this is linked with whenever I eat trash foods.
On the healthy diet front, I'll claim most of a victory— we stuck with intermittent fasting for the most part and I brought a salad and nuts with me for lunch most workdays. Dinner was hit-or-miss, and we generally did a good job of keeping snacks out of the house.
On abstaining from things that made me feel crappy: partial success! I actually didn't have any alcohol all year! 🎉 Well, that's if you don't count the handful of nonalcoholic beers I had at 0.5% alcohol content (I don't). Social media was hit or miss— I kept poking on Reddit a lot and joined Bluesky towards the end of the year, which actually reduced the doomscrolling quite a bit. My Bluesky feed is basically just friends and Flesh & Blood content, so I don't drink from the political news firehose nearly as often. It's been net-positive, as far as I can tell!
Reading didn't go nearly as well— I only finished four books last year! I got about halfway through with another five books but didn't get around to finishing them. I'm not going to beat myself up too much over missing my reading goal, though.
Finally, I think I nailed the saying "yes" and "no" bits! I joined that cycling group by saying "yes," as well as my Flesh & Blood group. Happy to report that these groups have been fantastic additions to my life! I bumped up on my "burnout" levels of hyperfixation on the bicycle advocacy and said "no" to a few city council meetings and activities, which certainly kept the burnout at bay.
2025, setting intentions.
This is the year of the follow-through! We've been paying lip service to making things happen with our bicycling advocacy organization. This year, we're going to be setting up our 501(c)(3). With that comes paperwork, soliciting grants, and arranging to actually do stuff. I'll need to be mindful of burnout, but I'll also need to be mindful of maintaining the discipline to not give up when the going gets tough.
So, yeah! Aspirations. Here's a list of things I'd like to accomplish:
- Keep up the cycling and hit at least 2,000 miles again.
- Write a grant application or three to get our 501(c)(3) some actual funding.
- Finish what I start! Play through a game or two and read some books!
- Keep participating in my recreational groups.
- Eat well, sleep well, and get plenty of physical activity.
- Keep saying "yes" and "no"— do new things but don't burn myself out!
2024 has been such an amazing year and I'm excited to see what this upcoming year has in store for us. We don't have any big plans for the year like our cross-country train trip honeymoon, but we do plan on attending the Flesh & Blood Calling: Memphis tournament at the end of the month. It'll be a fun road trip with some friends from our local community. We need to be a little more financially responsible this year, so any adventures we do will probably be little drivable weekend jaunts.
To wrap up: HAPPY NEW YEAR! I hope it's good to you and yours and you accomplish all that you set out to.
Until next time, be well! :)