Goal 1: Documenting 2025

I’m going to spend about the next two weeks writing more about these goals I set for myself in the new year and I think it’s important to start with this one because it allows me to get into what you can expect from me here…and maybe what not to expect.

I think, of all the goals I listed on the first day of the year, the idea of documenting the year by writing here every day might be the most unrealistic.

While I like the idea of it, that’s a lot. So there’s a chance I don’t follow through on it.

But it really ticks the box of what I like, so maybe I do.

I feel like I always say this in one way or another - I know there are other media through which I can express myself…but I love to write. So writing it is.

If you’re new to my writing, let me give you a quick history of situations like this, then what I thought 2025 might bring, and finally, what this will actually be:

History

I like the idea of writing something every day of the year. Years ago - more than a decade - it was in the form of status updates on Facebook - I did one a day for a couple of years in a row. The first year was before I even had a camera with a good phone, because I remember the second year thinking, ‘Wow, this will be so much easier with a picture thrown in occasionally.’ Then in 2013, I decided to try something new every day - that was ‘365 New Things in 2013’, which I think I’ve managed to salvage entirely and link to above, but you have to go through it backwards if you’re interested in reading it. In 2015 or thereabouts, I wrote a joke a day, which seems amazing to me now since I’m not sure I can get my brain to do that these days.

Lately the writing was weekly, as I published something every Sunday for a number of years.

The problem with doing this is while I like it as a way to keep me doing some creative writing in addition to my work writing, sometimes it distracts from projects that I should be working on, like the book I want to be working on this year that you may have noticed was also a 2025 goal.

The Original 2025 Idea

Since writing something every day seemed daunting I originally intended to break 2025 up - I had a list of 12 goals - One a month. And I thought I would break up the week so that I would end up with 52 entries for ‘Learning Something New’, ‘Trying Something New’, ‘New Music’, ‘New TV/Movie’…that sort of thing, one each per week.

I thought the chunks might help…but I kind of scrapped that idea because even 52 seemed like a lot. Or I didn’t want to commit to a number in case I listened to more music than watched movies. Also, I want to read more, and that didn’t seem to fit in because I don’t think I can go through a book a week.

How The Idea Turned Out

So here we are. I have an easy first 13 entries of the year because I am spending a day on each of the goals. I am going to do my best to put something here every day just to help keep me accountable, especially with the running training and the writing pieces. I’m going to try to be as honest as possible, even when it’s not flattering.

I think the key piece is this is not going to be a well-written essay every day. Some days it might be a paragraph, other days it might be longer like this one is. I’ll leave myself room to write about something new I watched that I enjoyed or I’ll leave myself room to write about the 2025 Mets, because that has the potential to be a fun part of the coming year. (And was a fun thing for me to write about in 2024 - but I know that’s not appealing to everyone.)

What works to my advantage here is I can put something out every day without having to spend time writing something every day. I’m sure some days I’ll have the time to write about something immediate that happened - and I’ll want to, for example, with a training run that I want to reflect on. But there are other days I can put a few pieces in the can and release them when I have nothing else. That’s what I did a lot with 365 New Things, and it always helps when I can schedule posts a week or so in advance.

The bottom line is I hope to be more disciplined with my writing this year, and I’m going to tell you about that as I stay disciplined with these entries in 2025.