Reflecting on My 2024 Goals

It's that time of year again! Time to look back on the goals I set for myself at the beginning of 2024 and then wax reflective about each of them and how my attempts to accomplish each one went :)

✅ Get a tattoo.  I did this!! After years of saying I would like to get a tattoo, I finally followed through and got one that I loved :) My artist was a former neighbor of mine and he now has a shop just a short ways away from where I live. He was so easy to work with and honestly, as a very anxious and needle-averse person, it was so not a big deal. I was glad I brought a friend with me, but in the future when I get more tattoos (because there WILL be more tattoos!), I would be fine to go alone if it came down to it.

🤏 Create a rhythm for blogging.  I became a little more regular with my blog posts, but I definitely didn't hit a rhythm like I had hoped. I think this year was more about trying to answer the question, "So if I'm not writing book reviews anymore, what AM I writing about?" I spent a good amount of the time I did publish just following my interests and writing about the things that were weighing on my mind. So I think good steps were made, but I didn't identify the right goal for where I'm at in this process. I'll keep trying though!

❌ Get my nose pierced.  Didn't happen yet, but once again, I'm pushing this forward into my 2025 goals. Maybe this year will be the year!

✅ 52 weeks of gratitude.  I did it! Doing this in a weekly format as opposed to the daily format that I tried to pull off in 2023 was much more achievable. It was nice to sit down at the end of the week and think about things that I was grateful for, no matter what the week had been like. In fact, it was especially nice to do when it had been an exceptionally hard week. When things at work felt like they were falling apart around me, when my grandpa passed away, when my son was having a really hard time at school and needed more support than anyone thought he would need... it was a really good mental health practice to look for the good. The ways I was supported. The distractions that came at a good time and provided a reprieve. Whatever those glints of gold looked like for the week.

⚠️ Find a side-hustle.   I ended up taking this goal off of my list because it fell off the list of importance for me. I have this habit and history of only doing things if I know I will get paid for doing them. It's easier to justify taking on more things and trying new things if I'm getting paid to do them. But this realization hit me this year that... my time is precious? And my hobbies don't have to be monetized in order to enjoy them. So instead of stressing myself out trying to find more work to fill the time I don't necessarily have on a regular basis, I decided that it felt better to let this goal go. Temporary work has still presented itself at times through my full-time teaching job and my summer work and those have been greatly appreciated without feeling too overwhelming!

✅ Write for the purpose of publication.  This goal was at the forefront of my mind all year, but ended up getting accomplished in a way I didn't expect! I started out the year with the idea that I would submit smaller bits of work (like poems, for example) and slowly pick at a novel project of my own creation. And I did pick at a novel project of my own creation. But my interest in that project fizzled out after a while. Where I found some traction and modest success was in writing Harry Potter fan fiction and publishing it on Archive of Our Own. After months and months of reading every bit of Harry Potter fan fiction I could get my hands on, I decided to make the leap and write my own fan fiction pieces. In 2024, I finish one short work (27,000+ words over 8 chapters, which was 7 more chapters than I planned on writing) and I have a work in progress that is, as of this writing, 19,000+ words over four chapters with more in the works. It has been so fun to have a regular writing practice, projects that I'm constantly working on, and I also have the urgency of knowing that people are reading what I write, whether it's finished or not. I am trying to keep myself in check and not overly concern myself with the numbers side of things. Mostly, I'm proud of myself for taking pride in my own writing and actually having fun again :)

🤏 Decorate for all of the holidays.  When I wrote this goal, I had it in my head that decorations would be visible from the street and would be very obvious on the front of my house. Due to an electrical issue that is minor but I don't have the skills to fix, we couldn't (safely) put up lights on our house and that just kind of took the excitement out of decorating for me. Some decoration happened inside my house. I want to make an effort to make more of a holiday decorating effort outside of my house in 2025, but until we fix the electrical issue, I'll have to think of ways that don't involve lights (at least the kind that plug in).

✅ Understand my ADHD brain better.  I didn't read as many books on this subject as I wanted, but I had a good, quality book that I was steadily working my way through this year. And I've learned a ton about how my brain works!

⚠️ Learn to identify agates.   Plain and simple: this goal just wasn't interesting to me anymore, so I let it go. No worries. It happens.

✅ Find/rediscover mobile hobbies.  2024 was the year that I got into embroidery and upped my sewing game a little bit :) I ended up taking embroidery hoops and just the thread I needed for the project I was currently working on when I went away from home for a few days. If I was working on sewing a plush, I would bring what I needed in order to keep the project moving 

❌ Go through the junk boxes I've been avoiding.  I continued to avoid the doom boxes. But they will make a comeback on my 2025 goals.

❌ Create an indoor storage system for tools.  I acquired most of the needed materials, but that's about it. I'll have to execute at the beginning of 2025 in order to make my projects easier to accomplish once it starts warming up outside again.

✅ Create a savings.  Success!

🤏 Learn basic electrical.  This is something I started, but due to my father-in-law's schedule and professional demands, it's been hard to be consistent with this. We'll continue to make progress in 2025.

✅ Physical and Digital Book No-Buy Year. This was a moderate success! Did I still acquire books? Yes... but in a way that fit my rules with very few exceptions. Now I just need to read more of my digital books that I've acquired over time. I don't plan to go nuts with books now that my no-buy year is over.

I'm proud of the things I've gotten to check off this list this year! I've met people who are into setting resolutions and others who think resolutions are lame and pointless. But I find that they help me create focus points in my life. I can always evaluate when my priorities change. Goals like these help me work towards becoming the person I want to be. We're all works in progress.

2025 goals will be coming soon as well as other non-goal-related posts!