I've been doing a lot of reflecting and thinking this month about what my yearly theme should be. As a reminder: my theme for 2024 was "Momentum".
Reviewing the Year of Momentum
As a reminder, I don't do ""resolutions"" but I do yearly themes. It's a concept I lifted from Cortex and it's really worked for me this year. Their most recent episode features Myke and Grey chatting about their themes for 2025 if you're interested!
Now...the Year of Momentum was a pretty big one for me. I picked this word because I liked how it sounded, but also because it really applied to a lot of goals I wanted to accomplish this month which were related to "building momentum" in my life to spring into the new phase of my life. Namely:
- Graduate ✅
- Get my driver's license ✅
- Get a job ✅✅✅✅
- Think about graduate school and apply ✅✅
I succeeded at pretty much all of these! The third bullet point specifically I succeeded at 4 times over since I'm now juggling 4 different positions of varying importance. Other goals like reading more, exercising more (this wasn't always very consistent), and playing or reading more things that I enjoy were also accomplished, but not really worth a shout out here? I guess here are very small honorable mentions for achievement's sake:
- Found a YouTube channel for trauma/stress focused yoga that has ended up really helping me.
- I don't have car insurance yet but we sold one of our cars this year. I've also been looking into getting a loan from my bank soon and this led to a discussion between my parents and I about refinancing some our other cars, so I'm glad my research led to that.
- My favorite book that I read this year is Unlikely Animals by Annie Hartnett.
- My favorite game is...probably Mouthwashing? I didn't get a chance to play too many games this year, but I've just been really intentional about what I play, and that resulted in me not straying too far from the usual.
- My favorite show was probably Wonderful Precure up until the second half of the show. I also watched the last season of Hilda and thoroughly enjoyed it.
There were some goals I didn't reach but I'm not going to dwell on them! Next year has a lot in store for me, too, so I won't get too worked up about it. It's a good opportunity for me to bring them into next year anyway.
Looking forward to 2025
I have some reservations about next year, but I'm trying very hard to get better at adult-ing. Unfortunately, being neurodivergent and easily overwhelmed means that I have to write things down over and over again to get things to stick. HOWEVER fortunately, having some structure in my life with a more rigid part-time job is helping to bring some structure and reason to my life...
My goals are as follows:
- Get car insurance.
- I need a car for this first.
- I apparently qualify for California's low cost auto insurance, though, so I'm going to be doing some shopping in January.
- Get health insurance
- Get a second internship cycle at Calbright
- Ace my graduate school interview
- This will need some extra work...
- Complete my second internship cycle and get a permanent job at Calbright?
- Get better at networking!
- Also get better at socializing. I've been going out more lately, but typically with the same group of friends. I want to do more fun stuff, but it's hard when driving is such a hassle most of the time.
...Which is honestly a lot now that I see it written out. We'll see how well I do! I think completing half of these would make me happy enough? I've made a lot of progress during the year of momentum and I hope to keep carrying that with me.
2025 themes?
I'm reaching the end of December and to be frank: I have yet to be struck with divine inspiration for my 2025 theme. I have a few words in mind but I also have...issues with them.
- Stability - Feels too safe and less "active" than momentum. I'm building momentum in 2024 and keeping it into 2025, so I don't want a word that makes it sound like I'm...stopping?
- Leap - A bit too...childish sounding? I don't think a one-syllable word flows well after "momentum".
- Spring - Same as above.
As I've been writing this post, the one word that keeps coming to mind is maintaining my rhythm, so that might be the word I'll keep in mind...