As the year comes to an end, we will look back on the goals I set for myself earlier in 2025. This has been a tradition for almost the entire time I’ve run this blog, aside from last year when I kinda let it slide and as a result felt very aimless. So I wanted to come back to setting goals for myself this year, specifically four broader things. It worked-ish. Read for yourself!

Well, this one was a flop. I might have found a new routine with my weekly commute and work, but it was tricky to combine this new life style with my old routine (especially with my former daily workout routine). I also had way less energy for socialising than anticipated…
I think my main mistake was thinking that working life and commuting would be in any way similar to my former life as a student with loads of free time. I’m also a person who really struggles with changing an established routine — never change a running system and all that — or breaking out of known patterns. When I can’t hold on to the old routines, I get easily frustrated and hate myself for lacking flexibility when it comes to how I live my life. That was the biggest problem with this goal in 2025. Better luck next year, maybe?

Apart from the few books I had already bought in bookstore chains and had mentioned in my goals post earlier this year, I did stick to this goal once I sat it back in February. I only shopped with independent bookstores and have two main takeaways from this experience: first of all, I must say that it really taught me patience. I sometimes had to wait a long time after ordering books from my local bookstore, instead of running to a chain store and grabbing the books right off the shelves without thinking twice about it. The second thing I realised was that I finally started to order and buy books that have been sitting on my wish list for years in some cases. I made way more conscious decisions when it came to book shopping and finally left a dent in an ever growing list, while supporting local and independent businesses in the process. It felt really good and I hope to continue this new habit in the coming year.

Uuurgh, what can I say? After finalising and handing in my MA theses back in January, I thought I was free forever and could finally focus all my free time on creative projects like writing blogposts or working on a new novel. But then I got the horror email informing me that I didn’t have enough credits to graduate and needed to finish three more modules in order to get my MA. That immediately sapped all my motivation for new things and killed my slowly budding creativity that had started to return in spring. All the ideas and urge to be creative had to take a backseat once again and kinda stayed there for the rest of the year. So I guess I failed miserably when it comes to this goal; I would even go as far and say I’m in the mids of a crisis when it comes to my writing and creative work and I hope, hope, hope it will get better in 2026.

This was probably the easiest goal out of all four to achieve. I did it. Like I said earlier this year, I was already mainly veggie and therefore it truly wasn’t hard to commit to it fully. There were only very few moments where I had to resolve to eating around the served meat or only eating the side dishes, which was absolutely manageable. Since it wasn’t that much of a struggle, I think I will continue this in the future and might even try to resort to more vegan options, too. I still don’t believe I can be completely vegan, but who knows. Guess we’ll have to wait and see!

That’s it with my goals and resolutions for 2025 and my own reflection on how I did with them. What were your new year resolutions this year and how did you do with them? Feel free to leave a comment!
Happy new year!
//K.