2024 goals met and missed
I don't put much stock in New Year's resolutions, but I guess I do put a little. Last year I had three goals: average 10,000 steps a day, read at least 366 new picture books, and journal once a day every other day reasonably often. As I will show, I smashed two of the goals and failed the third with flightless colors.
Walking
Yep, killed it. I mean, that's about all my body can tolerate nowadays, walking around like an idiot, so I do it a lot. That's well over 2000 miles in 2024, so I guess you could say that I would walk a thousand miles and I would walk a thousand more.
You can see where I got off pace during the August horror (which extended into September), so by rights I should've done even better. The daily average for the other ten months was 12,255.
For the first two days of 2025, it's 17,460! But the goal remains the same: a minimum of 10,000 a day.
Reading
Mission accomplished, kind of? The goal was specifically to read 366 new picture books. I'm sure I didn't. There's a ton of other stuff included in that number, but I guess it's a good outcome either way! Although I do take in plenty of print books, audiobooks are my secret weapon for not falling hopelessly behind in my reading--and when you walk five to eight miles a day, there's ample time for listening.
And take it from me, an official librarian: audiobooks count as reading. As long as you pay attention, that is. I am just as slow and laborious an audiobook listener as I am a regular book reader. If the audiobook is ten hours long, count on it taking me twelve to fifteen hours to finish, because I will backtrack a single sentence a thousand times if I catch my focus wavering.
I don't have a specific reading goal for this year. Not a countable number of books, anyway. "Shitload" sounds about right. I guess I would say that, however much time I already spend reading, I would like to see myself sitting down with a physical book more often, building up my reading stamina and reclaiming a bit of my attention span. Like a fat person boldly resisting one slice of cake at a time, I would like to see my phone gather more dust as I choose, again and again and again, to pick up a book instead.
Journaling
No graphic for this one, but suffice it to say it was a failure--but not as big a failure as it could have been! The goal of an entry a day went out the window almost immediately, and the revised every-other-day goal lasted not much longer. In fact I produced only 90 journal entries in 2024. What's more embarrassing is how this reflects on the state of journaling over the past several years. 90 entries represents a pathetic output, and yet it's almost double what I produced in 2023, with just 48 entries. And it's the most I wrote in a single year since 2015. Not a good look for someone who considers writing part of his personality.
I have posited this before, but this is Kimberly's fault. Sharing a bed with the most important person in my life takes a lot of pressure off me to commit my darkest secrets to text. It does not, however, cure me of thinking in expository prose, narrating everything to an invisible audience. That is not an r/iamverysmart kind of thing to say; I consider it a pathology, and I wonder if other people are afflicted by it.1 In that sense, I'm never not "writing." So, the great journaling crash of 2013 that I never quite recovered from makes sense, but it also doesn't.
The goal this year? Again, not a specific number of words or entries, just "write more." Yes, that means even if (when!) it's crap, still you must produce. Nothing gets done if you wait until you're ready. Great is the enemy of good, and perfect is the enemy of done. Follow me for additional morsels of dubious wisdom.
New goals
None, really. Too many goals dilute your focus. Yes, I would like to brush up on my German, and finally solve the Rubik's Cube, and learn to play that stupid ukulele I bought to entertain the pre-K students, and learn to juggle, but those will all just have to fly on standby and hope a seat opens up on Resolution Airlines flight 2025.
Blissful new year upon ye.
1 narrating everything...pathology: In much the same way, I sincerely wonder if other people make insane ape noises, howl madly, and sing in nonsense language almost constantly when no one else is around. It's hard to picture. Is this normal, or do I have unusually well-regulated Tourette syndrome? I'll file this under "questions I don't care to have answered."
Walking
Yep, killed it. I mean, that's about all my body can tolerate nowadays, walking around like an idiot, so I do it a lot. That's well over 2000 miles in 2024, so I guess you could say that I would walk a thousand miles and I would walk a thousand more.
You can see where I got off pace during the August horror (which extended into September), so by rights I should've done even better. The daily average for the other ten months was 12,255.
For the first two days of 2025, it's 17,460! But the goal remains the same: a minimum of 10,000 a day.
Reading
Mission accomplished, kind of? The goal was specifically to read 366 new picture books. I'm sure I didn't. There's a ton of other stuff included in that number, but I guess it's a good outcome either way! Although I do take in plenty of print books, audiobooks are my secret weapon for not falling hopelessly behind in my reading--and when you walk five to eight miles a day, there's ample time for listening.
And take it from me, an official librarian: audiobooks count as reading. As long as you pay attention, that is. I am just as slow and laborious an audiobook listener as I am a regular book reader. If the audiobook is ten hours long, count on it taking me twelve to fifteen hours to finish, because I will backtrack a single sentence a thousand times if I catch my focus wavering.
I don't have a specific reading goal for this year. Not a countable number of books, anyway. "Shitload" sounds about right. I guess I would say that, however much time I already spend reading, I would like to see myself sitting down with a physical book more often, building up my reading stamina and reclaiming a bit of my attention span. Like a fat person boldly resisting one slice of cake at a time, I would like to see my phone gather more dust as I choose, again and again and again, to pick up a book instead.
Journaling
No graphic for this one, but suffice it to say it was a failure--but not as big a failure as it could have been! The goal of an entry a day went out the window almost immediately, and the revised every-other-day goal lasted not much longer. In fact I produced only 90 journal entries in 2024. What's more embarrassing is how this reflects on the state of journaling over the past several years. 90 entries represents a pathetic output, and yet it's almost double what I produced in 2023, with just 48 entries. And it's the most I wrote in a single year since 2015. Not a good look for someone who considers writing part of his personality.
I have posited this before, but this is Kimberly's fault. Sharing a bed with the most important person in my life takes a lot of pressure off me to commit my darkest secrets to text. It does not, however, cure me of thinking in expository prose, narrating everything to an invisible audience. That is not an r/iamverysmart kind of thing to say; I consider it a pathology, and I wonder if other people are afflicted by it.1 In that sense, I'm never not "writing." So, the great journaling crash of 2013 that I never quite recovered from makes sense, but it also doesn't.
The goal this year? Again, not a specific number of words or entries, just "write more." Yes, that means even if (when!) it's crap, still you must produce. Nothing gets done if you wait until you're ready. Great is the enemy of good, and perfect is the enemy of done. Follow me for additional morsels of dubious wisdom.
New goals
None, really. Too many goals dilute your focus. Yes, I would like to brush up on my German, and finally solve the Rubik's Cube, and learn to play that stupid ukulele I bought to entertain the pre-K students, and learn to juggle, but those will all just have to fly on standby and hope a seat opens up on Resolution Airlines flight 2025.
Blissful new year upon ye.
1 narrating everything...pathology: In much the same way, I sincerely wonder if other people make insane ape noises, howl madly, and sing in nonsense language almost constantly when no one else is around. It's hard to picture. Is this normal, or do I have unusually well-regulated Tourette syndrome? I'll file this under "questions I don't care to have answered."