Goals retrospective 2025

In my last goalpost, I said I would check back in in the spring about how my winter goals went, and set new ones for the coming season. I didn’t do that! Nonetheless, I had at least partial success with my winter goals.

• My exercise routine was never super regular, but I saw some progress from lifting weights over the course of this year.
• The singing-focused event never materialized, but later this year, I managed to get a group of like-minded composers together for the first time.
• I posted for a bit with gomepage before getting sidelined by overfocus on another project. But I’m trying again here!
• I did indeed finish the choral piece I’d been working on, and it turned out pretty good! I unfortunately have not prioritized writing throughout the rest of the year. But I have another official project that will be in the works soon.
• I honestly don’t remember what other goals I had set that I didn’t mention in the original post. Documentation is important!

Despite not setting it as an official seasonal goal, I also managed to whittle down my social media usage pretty dramatically this year. I partake of just a little slice of YouTube, mostly one channel, mostly via audio, with no logging in or reccomendation feed. I also still read a small handful of accounts on Twitter, again, without logging in, via an alternative frontend, but that’s something I’d really like to kick still.

Strangely enough, one of my biggest vices right now might be hobby coding. On the one hand, it’s ostensibly useful, since I’m making software I myself or others can use, and I’m learning new things and building skills. I kind of think of hobby coding as akin to a video game: I get the same kind of satisfaction out of it as I do out of gaming, but I’d rather sink a lot of hours into something potentially productive rather than ephemeral achievement in a game.

But I do spend a lot of time on it that I really could put towards music or cooking or reading or exercise or going for walks or socializing, or just generally finding ways to be a more well-rounded person. Since it’s arguably “useful”, I give myself permission to be totally immoderate in pursuing my coding projects, but then I waste a lot of time on projects I won’t end up finishing, or doing things in particular, inefficient ways just because I want to.

I’ve talked about this before, but obsession seems to be part of my personality. A big part of maturing for me has been becoming more aware of obsession in the various places it comes up in my life, and then using that awareness to gradually shed whatever underlying anxiety led to it.

Obsession deserves some credit; it’s why I’m any good at things like music and coding. But it’s kind of a dirty fuel; it doesn’t play nice with the rest of your life, almost by definition. And I’m still struggling with knowing how to proceed when I lose obsession: I’m just not as fixated on music as I used to be, but I wish I was still as intrinsically motivated to write music, and to learn more about it.

This has been a long & meandering post, but I think the reflection was useful for discovering what I’d like to focus on this winter.

• Quit reading Twitter
• Listen to three audiobooks: I like having some verbal audio while I do chores, and this would help me diversify my audio diet.
• Organize and timebox my coding projects: I’ll spend a limited amount of time on them each week, perhaps drawing from a shared time budget with video games.
• Make a daily habit of playing piano just for fun! That’s how I fell in love with music in the first place.

I still like this seasonal goal-setting structure. It lets me be modest and realistic in the goals I set. I reserve the right to revise or expand this list. By March 20th, 2026, I intend to come back, review, and set new goals.

How did your goals go in 2025? Are you setting new ones for the coming year or season? Let me know your thoughts at my Ctrl-C email: gome ​@ ​ctrl-c.club.