It’s tiiiiime. Making my yearly goals is one of my favorite traditions. It all gets started near the fourth quarter of the previous year when I start thinking about what I want my life to look like at the end of the next year. What are the big things I wanted to accomplish? How do I want to feel in November 2025? What are some fun goals that would make my year a little more magical? I start making a list of ideas in my Notes app as they come to me. Some of these goals make it to my official list and some do not. It’s all about visualizing and making a plan.
This year, I have five goals in five categories: Home, Adulting, Health, Hobbies, and Fun. I’ve also done something I’ve never done before: I’ve left a few goals TBD. I’ve seen other people do this and I don’t know why it has never occurred to me to do the same. I was struggling to think of a fifth goal in some of these categories so I just decided that I’d leave those blank for now. Hopefully, inspiration will strike at some point in the year and I’ll add a goal to that fifth spot. But if not, that’s okay, too! I don’t want to make a goal just to make a goal, which is what I’ve done in years past. This way, the goals on this list are ones that I feel strongly about. (Well, at least right now. I reserve the right to change them if needed!)
So, without further ado, let’s get into my 2025 goals!
HOME
1) Itemize everything in my home. I’m not always going to live in a third-floor apartment, so it’s a good time to make an itemized list of everything I own just in case I need to submit a claim for water damage/hurricane loss/etc. I’ve watched two friends go through this disaster scenario in 2024, and the itemization process is so arduous! I’d rather have the majority of it done before I need to worry about it.
2) Buy a new area rug, coffee table, bookshelf, and throw pillows. Once a quarter, I’d like to make one bigger household purchase, and these are the ones I’ve chosen! Each will cost between $100-$200 so these aren’t HUGE household purchases, but they will take some budgeting and planning.
3) Move to a two-bedroom apartment. Third time’s the charm? I’ve had this on my list for the last two years, but I am committed to making it happen in 2025.
4) Stick to a weekly cleaning routine. And maybe I’ll even make myself a sticker chart because nothing motivates me more than “If the whole chart is filled out, you can buy a new book!” Listen, I’m 37 and sometimes need to treat myself like a 7-year-old. It is what it is!
5) TBD
ADULTING
1) Change my primary email address. I’ve been using my blog’s email address for all of my personal emails, and it’s a little cringe to say it out loud to people. They’re always like, “Oh, are you a writer? What have you written?” Sigh. I’ll keep my blog email for blog stuff, but for things like bills, medical accounts, and things like that, I want to have a more professional-sounding email address. It’s kind of a hassle to change an email address for certain accounts (my mom just did this, and it’s not as seamless as you would think!), so making it a goal will ensure I get ‘er done.
2) Spend 50% less in online takeout from 2024. It’s well-known on this blog that I am a super consumer of Ubereats and other online takeout providers. Originally, I had a goal to go cold turkey from online takeout in 2025, but I think that’s just setting myself up for failure. Instead, I want to spend 50% less than I did in 2024, which would be a massive improvement. (I need to figure out the actual number I spent on online takeout in 2024, and once I do, I’ll have a concrete number to measure this goal by.)
3) Pay off my LASIK bill. I need to pay it off this year so I don’t start incurring interest!
4) Save $3,000 in my emergency savings. I’m going to gamify this for myself and use this challenge chart. There are 52 squares on the printable, so I’ll print out three of them and hang them up, then randomly choose one square from each sheet every week!
5) TBD
HEALTH
1) Improve my posture. I’m not sure what this will entail yet. Everything I read online about improving posture talks about stretches to help strengthen the muscles that cause bad posture. So maybe some stretches. Maybe a more supportive office chair or lumbar pillow. Maybe it’s being more mindful and doing regular check-ins on my posture via an app or something? I’m not sure but I’m open to ideas!
2) Lose 20 lbs. Listen, I’m not happy to have a weight loss goal on this list, but the truth of the matter is that I do need to lose weight because I am unhealthy at this weight. The sleep apnea diagnosis, the sciatica, the blood work do not lie. This equates to losing 5 lbs every quarter, which is entirely doable and small enough that I don’t feel like I have to completely overhaul my diet to make it happen.
3) Move my body every day. My goal is to make it to the gym five days a week (two HIIT classes, one spin class, one yoga class, and one cardio day using the machines) and then fill out the other two days with walks around my apartment complex.
4) Work on my daily routines. I really struggle with my daily routines and that’s because I live alone and work from home. I have a lot of flexibility built into my day and sometimes I take that too far. I’d like to work on having a solid morning and evening routine each day so that I can start my workday around 8 a.m. and get to bed at a decent hour (ideally, 10 p.m.).
5) TBD
HOBBIES
1) Read one 500+ page book every quarter. I tend to shy away from longer books because I’m afraid of getting “stuck behind them” (aka, not finishing any other books for weeks because the longer book is taking me so long to read). But there are a few doorstop books on my TBR I’d love to finally read this year, including The Shell Seekers by Rosamunde Pilcher, 11/22/63 by Stephen King, and Fall of Giants by Ken Follett. Just need one more book to round out this quartet!
2) Go to at least 6 Silent Book Club meetings. I stopped going to Silent Book Club meetings sometime in early 2024. I just got out of the habit and then kept forgetting to put their meeting schedule in my calendar. Hopefully, having this goal will help me get back to SBC! I love being around other bookish people and having a concentrated hour to read my book.
3) Read 125 books. This will be a stretch goal for me and I don’t technically need to set a numeric reading goal, but I like to do so anyway. It’s okay if I don’t reach this goal, but I’d like to try.
4) Remove all the spammy links that have been added to my blog. My blog got hacked sometime in 2023 and it was just in the last few months that I noticed that all of these spam links have been added to some of my blog posts. I don’t know the best way to do this other than manually. (I may be able to use Google Search Console, but I just set that up a few days ago and I’m still waiting on the data to be processed.) This will be a big blog goal for 2025, in any event!
5) Complete the Taylor Swift reading challenge. Bri clued me into this reading challenge and I am… ready for it! Tehehe. This looks like a super fun reading challenge to complete!
FUN
1) Watch four movies – one from 1987, one from 1988, one from 1989, and one from 1990. I don’t know where I got the idea for this goal, but I have decided that I’d like to watch one movie from every year I’ve been alive. But since I don’t want to set myself up for failure, I’m only going to challenge myself to watch four movies this year (from my first four years of life!), so one per quarter. That feels doable!
2) Take a Virgin Voyages cruise. My mom and I are dying to try our first Virgin Voyages cruise. We have heard nothing but rave reviews, so it’s something we’re hoping to do to celebrate her 60th birthday this year.
3) Watch the entirety of these series: Suits, New Girl, and a TBD series. I have the first seasons of both Suits and New Girl under my belt, but I need to watch the rest of the series. I am not great about watching series TV (give me strategy reality competitions any day!), but I would like to be. I’m hoping to finish another TV series while I’m at it, but I’m not sure which one I want yet. Suggestions welcome!
4) Repierce my nose. I mentioned yesterday that I had to remove my nose ring when I started using the CPAP because my mask was irritating it. I’m hoping it was just due to my face getting used to the mask, not because one cannot have a nose piercing and use a CPAP mask. I want to get my nose repierced this year (once you remove a nose ring, the hole closes up quick).
5) Do one new thing every month. This can be anything I want it to be but I want to challenge myself to spend more time outside the four walls of my apartment and do some new things in 2025. It could be visiting a new-to-me bookstore, going to a new-to-me brunch spot, going to a painting class, taking a new workout class. I just want to do one new thing every month! (Side note: I hope I’m not jinxing 2025 because this was a goal I had in 2020 and, well, we all know how that turned out.)
What’s something you’re hoping to accomplish in 2025?