2025 retrospective, 2026 goals
Reading Time: 5 minutes / Last modified: 2 months, 3 weeks ago.
A few days ago I revisited my Status Café and realised it had been a year since my last update. Ouch. It's a similar situation on this blog. I'm not sure if being out of education and into the work grind contributed in any way, because it's not even like I've been working full time either. Just a temporary hiatus. I'm grateful that the internet, especially the indie-web, is not something I feel I have to be consistent with. It's a place. Easy come, easy go... Galileo (Galileo) and whatever else.1 You already knew that, though. More to the point, I wanted to reflect on 2025, especially as this year has gotten people downright scared.2 Not me though... Somehow.
Everything, Every Month
Some months were really eventful and other months were really quiet or slow. That's the kind of year you want, really. The latter half of 2024 was rough as I tried to figure out my "place" post graduation. 2025 was the year things stabilised for me. Clock in, clock out. No assignments, no mess. Sometimes I want "more" for myself, but I've given myself the grace to take the past year slowly and I'm all the better for it.
January Chicago winter ft. demon weed, custom perfumes, and indigestion up the wazoo. My hometown back in the UK doesn't snow like it used to, and Chi-Town brought me back to that time.
February Got hooked on One Piece (the manga) and threw hands with a mobile network customer support bot. Somewhat. I had to dispatch my highly throwable imp (hoohoohee) to get my money back after a failed e-sim activation and no way to turn off auto-renewal. Evil... Evil, evil evil... I was so dumb!
March 3 year anniversary meal celebrated in swag town.
April Temporary new manager. Didn't like him. He left after this month.
May Oblivion Remastered fucked up my Steam Deck whenever I wanted to fast travel to that port area outside the capital. Only you, Bethesda, can take the piss so hard, I can smell it all the way from here.
June I diced onions really well.
July I joined Art Fight for the first time as a part of Team Fossil. We lost. I contributed only two attacks. This was also the start of my Chicago summer trip, where I somehow found myself sitting around half-asleep outside of security for about 5/6 hours. Superman, brief visit to Virginia, concrete beach, and I lost my damn prescription sunglasses!
August Two concerts, various museums and oddities. We didn't go to Lollapalooza but we, as the locals really love doing, loitered around! We also bought and tried suspicious Chinese aphrodisiac tea, it did not kill us, and on my last day we witnessed lightning, a red moon, and a missing person's search all at the beach. I flew out before the storm could take me.
September The iPhone 17... I guess?
October A couple of cars caught on fire.
November My birthday and a return to all my favourite antiques/collectible/artsy tchotchke shops in Norwich. London also became a bit more bearable. "It's brutalist..." I say. I cope.
December Moving in silence, save for the crunchity crunchy munch of all the Christmas treats work has been feeding us. Yum yum yum.
I'd say the biggest shame at the moment is how knackered I am at the end of my shifts, which has made it harder to keep in contact with everyone. We make it work, though! And people are always working harder than me (often with no choice). I'm beginning to realise more and more that a lot of my ideas of the perfect "adult friendships" are shaped by the vlog content I've been seeing these past couple of years (friends, endless art, little luxuries, poetic monologues, etc.)3, which only reflects a portion of someone else's reality. No one lives within the exact same context. Thinking about it that way has made it a lot easier to cope with the feeling that I'm not doing "enough."
Making Realistic 2026 Goals
It's not like I don't want to do great things either this year, I absolutely want to do more this year. I know for myself, I need to give less power to my fantasies. I've talked quite candidly through multiple outlets about how my daydreaming of my goals or dreams or desires being fulfilled has held me back from actively making them a reality. This year will be another step away from that. My strategy is really as simple as compartmentalising every goal into smaller goals with liberal timeframes. Even if I just complete one, that's something I can at least take pride in. Still, there's no harm in gamifying it:
| Release another game | Submit three ArtFight attacks | Attend a creative workshop |
| Start a YouTube channel | FREE SPACE | Donate a duffel bag's worth |
| Learn Javascript | Make a new friend | 100% Stardew Valley |
Even if the game is another 5 minute Int-Fic, the ArtFight attacks are quick sketches, the workshop is free and online and on some quiet YouTube channel, my YouTube channel only has 1 subscriber, the duffel bag hates me and says mean things about me, the Javascript damns me to else/if hell, my friend comes then goes, and my Stardew Valley farm is dooky butt butt hole... At least I can say I did those things. The Free Space is whatever I feel particularly proud of.
- One goal completed = a small shopping spree
- A line complete (vertical/horizontal/diagonal) = prize pool*
- Full house = idiot abroad
*Prize pool: tattoo, videogame (£50<), big charity donation, artist commission, K-Pop album, other merch (artist/musician), piercing; Select randomly and remove from pool!
Over the past year, my spending has decreased significantly which I'm so proud of myself for. As a result, however, I developed some insane money anxiety. Generally, it's done me a lot of good, but the constant state of tension was something I needed to sort out because, not only was I depriving myself, but I was also reluctant to give to others. This year, I want to legitimately reward myself for the things that I accomplish.
I feel a bit weird tying goals to consumption, but I'm not sure how much of that is a legitimate anti-consumerist concern or a part of my anxiety giving me a reason to not indulge myself. Two things can be true at once, so I've tried to keep my rewards as realistic as my goals based on my current financial situation. Even if I manage to nail a Full House and earn myself a vacation, I can't imagine I'll be blowing thousands in the Maldives. Besides, the one good thing I've managed to master this past year is the whole, "why would I buy that if I already have this," mindset. Horrible for the people who want to buy me gifts for special occasions, mind you.
By the end of this month, I'd like to write another post going into more detail about each goal I've set for myself, including the individual steps I can take to achieve them. Lay everything out plainly. It might also be time to make a couple of mood boards, eh? Eh? <-- This user luvs mood boards! Whether or not I'll actually do that is an entirely different matter. What you will see, however, is my 2025 media review. That was how this post started out as until I realised I wanted to talk about other things first.
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Footnotes
The contrarian spirit of Northernlion might be possessing me right now when I say this, but Bohemian Rhapsody is a 7/10 and I think people are kidding themselves a tad saying Queen made generational music. Same group of people who think pop is dead and mumble rap is low-brow trash (sometimes it is, but Queen is also sometimes trash). Let it be known I'm not speaking from an "old music" sucks perspective either. Sometimes the Tide is High and I'm holdin' on, and sometimes I ask myself, "where is that large automobile!?" Don't worry though, I'll be posting my top albums of 2025 at some point, and you'll get to say equally bold statements. But hey! Maybe you agree with me and think my take is ice cold.↩
I say that jokingly but it feels like we're in a very tense spot socio-politically. I'm inclined to believe some of it is recency bias, but that tension is there nevertheless. This isn't the post for me to dwell on it so I'm just slipping in one very broad but applicable message: I legitimately believe we're heading towards something better this year. (Edit: four days into 2026 and this statement is being tested already.)↩
I don't want this to be read as a jab against those kinds of content creators. In my mind, they're valuable to our current culture in how they reject AI and the wider commercial internet, at least as far as the actual creation and "handmade" editing style of that content (sponsorships or even the very nature of "content creators" could be used to contest against what I'm saying, honestly.) I'm just reiterating the saying, "comparison is the thief of joy," and the general knowledge that social media is a platform for the curated self; it's totally simulacra.↩