Reflecting on My 2025 Goals: Successes and Lessons Learned

You know, I used to be a rebel.

I had always considered pinning a new set of goals to something as systematic as the turn of another calendar year a silly and unnecessary practice. I had considered July 17th just as reasonable a time as January 1st to start fresh, introduce a new set of habits, and start building towards new dreams. Why limit yourself to a specific time and date, right?

Well, over the years, I’ve learned the importance of shared rituals and experiences. Yes, the act of pinning a fresh calendar, with 12 brand new months up on the wall may be wholly routine and have no real significance when dipped into the vast basin of nature, but it’s something that we all experience together in our society of structure, whether we choose to attach importance to it or not.

In recent years, I’ve become an ardent believer in annual goals. It’s much easier for that prevailing sense of renewal and fresh opportunities to penetrate deep into your bones when we’re all diving in together, all at once: Fresh faces marching into your local gym, coworkers sharing New Year’s resolutions, and friends and family starting on new habits and seeking encouragement as they embark on new habits they hope will fling them onwards into the lives they desire.

2025 was a year of a couple of major wins and twice as many abandoned losses

During the opening salvo of 2025, I had set out six simple goals for myself:

1. Read at least 21 books

I crushed this one. I’m sitting at 27 with about a week to go. The major themes in my reading habits this year seemed to be philosophy and history. My readings in Stoic philosophy, like Ward Farnsworth’s excellent “let-the-classics-speak-for-themselves” primer, The Practicing Stoic, to the actual classics like Seneca’s Dialogues and Letters led me right into a reread of Robert Fagles translation of Homer’s The Odyssey (the translation I read fresh out of high school, although I really need to read Emily Wilson’s next time).

I then bounced from Ithaca to Rome for a double-header of historical retellings of the dwindling days of the Roman Republic, with Mike Duncan’s The Storm Before the Storm and then Tom Holland’s (the author, not Spider-Man) Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic.

Towards the end of the year, I zoomed to the other side of the globe, plowing through Jonathan Clement’s A Brief History of Japan, which only grew more and more interesting as it progressed through its tight narrative of what brought us from early emperors of folktale legend, to the Japan of today.

Among my various reads I read new (to me) works from some of my favorite authors like Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore, as well as re-reads of classic books that have followed me throughout life such as the brand new 100 year anniversary, super-interesting annotated edition of The Great Gatsby. I also finally read classics high on my list that I never got around to, like John Fante’s Ask the Dust, which left me emotionally gutted with one of the most haunting, iconic endings ever.

2. Strength training at least 3x a week

Failed miserably.

My preferred form of exercise is running, and it didn’t take long (less than a couple of months) before I retired my dumbbells to a dusty corner of my bedroom and just started going on runs after work again. As I get older, I realize the importance of maintaining core strength and preserving muscle, but I’m just a creature of habit with these things, I guess. Truthfully, I exercise more for the mental benefits than the physical ones, and running gives me a chance to be outside and turn off my busy brain for a while, giving it an unfair edge in my roster of habits compared to sweating it out and lifting iron indoors.

3. Start a newsletter and publish twice monthly

Failed this one as well. Ouch.

I had high hopes for this one. I’ve been taking writing seriously since I was in my early 20s, and I have an unhealthy history of not allowing myself to publish anything that I didn’t deem perfect in my eyes.

Since then, I’ve learned to chill on myself a bit and allow myself to put stuff out just for the sake of practice and improvement, which is kind of where I am now. Still, a lot of those residual fears of not being perfect all the time in the public eye remain, which gives rise to frequent self-sabotage attempts.

With all that said, I don’t think it was purely self-sabotage that did me in on this one. It was over-promising right out of the gate, completely ignoring the energy-drain of my day job, which on rougher days, can leave me completely out of commission after work, and sound asleep as early as 7:30 PM. There were just so many days when I simply couldn’t muster the creative fortitude to drag a newsletter out of myself after putting in a 10-hour day.

This is one I really want to get off the ground. And maybe this blog on my personal website is a toned-down attempt to test-run that, but I realize that with writing, my goals have to be much more manageable until the words can flow like fine wine again.

4. Complete the Reddit (Focal Point) Photo class

This is one I wanted to do for a while. As a photography hobbyist with a day job, I’ve always wanted to tackle some kind of photo course with structure and assignments that would force me outdoors to challenge myself, expand my skill-set, and refine some techniques.

For those who aren’t in the know, Reddit has run an annual, completely free, online photo class under the r/photoclass subreddit. Every time I felt motivated enough to tackle this course, it just happened to be mid-year, and even though one could join the class at any time, I wanted to experience it from beginning to end, as the assignments were released.

I actually enjoyed it quite a bit while I was taking part, if for nothing else, than for the excuse to haul my equipment all over town, plan shoots, and play with my gear. I actually felt like a photographer again.

Sadly, and this may come as something of a shocker if you’ve been reading these in order so far, I didn’t complete this one. Which really sucks, because I had some major momentum going, and did some fun light trail shoots, as well as some decent on-location photography at the beach and while hiking.

The Focal Point group that ran this class hit something of a snag a few months in, suddenly delaying assignments for weeks at a time, and then abruptly dumping the rest of the course lessons all at once. But by that time, I had lost steam, and didn’t have the mettle to plow through the intimidating wall of lessons that remained. The magic of doing the assignments and sharing with the rest of the group was lost.

So yes, another one uncompleted. But I still gained much from this class. If nothing else, it stoked that exciting “get out there and do the thing” spirit that creative work is all about.

It worked until it didn’t.

5. Read a book completely in Chinese

Failed. But not without an honest effort.

This aligned nicely with my reading goal for 2025. I’ve read graded readers before. However, they are made specifically for foreign language-learners and focus on presenting a story simply for comprehension. They offer little opportunity when it comes to vocabulary expansion or actual enjoyment of the material.

I decided that after about 7 years of study, I was ready to tackle an honest-to-goodness book, completely in Chinese. I chose a self-help book called 改變人生的33種覺醒, or The 33 Awakenings that Change Your Life.

All I’m going to say is that this one was slow-going. Much slower than I had anticipated, and I was stalling out every two or three sentences, looking up vocabulary words on obscure metaphysical and philosophical terminology that I had never heard before and that truly challenged me.

Maybe I chose the wrong book. What I saw on the surface as a simple self-help guide was actually steeped in philosophical experiments on perception of the world around you. It dove into metaphysical subject matter such as the Tao, Zen-like riddles, and the ability to see the energies radiated into the universe by trees (seriously!). I got about a third of the way in, made a ton of vocabulary flashcards to study, but just couldn’t derive any enjoyment from the abstract subject matter, and the constant cross-referencing in the dictionary.

I’ll likely take another stab at this at some point.

6. Sell my mom’s house and pay off all debt

My mom passed away from cancer back in 2014. She died at such a young age, leaving my younger brother and I reeling in shock. Although she left us the house, we let our aunt (Mom’s sister) move in after my mom passed since she helped us so much with my mom’s hospice care, funeral arrangements, and closing accounts.

My aunt continued living there until just last year, and my brother and I never properly dealt with the house, transferring it into our names, and filing the proper paperwork in court. My brother and I finally agreed to sell the house, and my plan was to pay off my student loans and all my remaining debt with the sale.

Because we had waited far too long, the process was a lot more challenging, not to mention expensive, than we had ever imagined. We hired a lawyer to help us navigate the process, and several months and thousands of dollars later, we had to do the same with a realtor, who strongly suggested that we shake the money tree once more to pay for some needed repairs and remodeling.

The process bled us dry, but as of a few months ago, the house finally sold (and was immediately completely remodeled and flipped). Because of our original procrastination, the money from the sale is still in some kind of legal limbo, but I will mark this one as a partial success since the toughest part is now behind us.

What I learned and what I’ll do differently in 2026

I think factoring my day job into the mix, six goals was a bit too much. There’s a point where you’re just juggling one thing after the next, making focusing on anything for an extended period difficult, and robbing you of a lot of the enjoyment that should be derived from the process of deep work. I think three is the sweet spot, four at a slightly riskier absolute maximum.

Some of these goals required a major time investment, and the small window of time I have between the day job and the time I pass out for the night was simply not enough. Sure, I have the weekends too, but during the weekends I also have running, hiking, laundry, and other mundane maintenance tasks like grocery shopping all competing for time.

Reducing the scope of a few of these to easier to achieve “daily wins” could have helped avert burnout and make them much more sustainable as well.

My next post will focus on what annual goals I have in mind for 2026 and the tweaks and rationale I’m applying after learning from the mistakes of this year to make those more achievable.