I don’t know why, but it feels like it’s been much longer than a month since I’ve had to write one of these. I keep thinking to myself that I forgot to do this a week or two ago, but I look at the calendar and somehow it’s still December 2025. I guess it goes to show how much the end of year holiday celebrations can grind life down to a halt. This year wasn’t particularly egregious in that department or anything, about as typical as it gets. Perhaps the tedium has started to wear on me after so long.
The only added stressor I can point to beyond the typical pressures surrounding holiday gatherings was the uncertainty involving the night job that lasted throughout the entire month. We’ve finally got some new employees to help me out, so I’ll be back to working three nights a week for the foreseeable future. It was particularly irksome to spend my entire break from the main job still working six shifts a week. I keep telling myself it’s only a few hours per night, but those hours take up more space in my day than they should on paper. There’s a lot more I wanted to get done in December that didn’t end up happening because I constantly had to put everything down to fulfill my obligations, light as they may have been. Working at night over the majority of a week also makes it difficult to maintain a consistent, healthy sleep schedule, leading to some predictable struggles with time management and mental health.
There’s not much of a point in dwelling on it too deeply. I crave the upcoming return to normalcy in my day-to-day, as always. I’m bracing myself to be shot out of a cannon into 2026; I’m feeling more certain than ever that there are things I want to accomplish with my time as I build up the drive to achieve them. A vague sense of fogginess covers my thought processes around honing self-motivation, but I even have a plan to tackle that particular issue head-on as soon as possible.
As is tradition, I’m going to spend the rest of this journal entry looking back on 2025 and assessing my personal growth—or lack thereof. I also usually put forward some New Years resolution-style bars I’d like to clear within the following 365 days, though I’m not exactly sure what I even want those to be this time around. There are some ongoing goals I want to build upon in 2026 that mirror much of what I’ve tried to construct over the past handful of years. I’ve learned a fair bit more about my strengths and my limitations, and at this point I think my efforts are best put toward min-maxing those attributes toward the ends I want to reach. This isn’t to say that I’m closing myself off from new avenues of improvement, just that I’ve already chosen some I firmly believe I must keep venturing down.
I set a handful of small goals for myself this time last year, and considering everything that's happened, I think I did a good enough job living up to them. I completed a small original creative project while learning a new skill this year in working with LSDJ to make some music. I absolutely knocked it out of the park in upgrading my retro tech collection by adding some new CRT displays to my game room, along with my dream Windows 98 PC, accompanying peripherals, and several other odds and ends. I did an okay job improving my focus and attention span, though maybe not to the degree I'd have hoped for. My quality of sleep has improved somewhat, but I am still finding myself staying up too late most of the time—a problem that will likely continue on as I keep working nights three days a week. Overall, I'd probably score this year's goals either a four or four and a half out of five, which I'm happy with!
Beyond those, I found other small ways to improve my quality of life. I made a concerted effort to go outside more often in 2025, a habit I hope to continue on into the future. I went to the doctor, got a blood test and identified some holes in my nutrition regimen which have since been filled. I learned how to dress better and drastically improved my wardrobe, mostly via thrift shopping. I started up an eBay store and already sold a couple items which previously sat unused in my back closet for years. After a prolonged mental health break, I got back into writing and put out some of my best work to date.
All in all, it was a decent year. There was no catastrophic event that flipped my life upside down, and I managed to build upon some things I'd been working on in previous years. I can't help but feel like I didn't do enough, but maybe that's just my insecurities talking. I had some fairly negative journal entries in the past handful of months, but I honestly feel like I've grown past much of that in the short time since then. I am framing the next little bit of my future within a positive, growth-oriented mindset. I don't want to compound my struggles with further negative thinking. If I need time to rest or mentally shut down, that's what I'm going to do. The self-care thing is kind of cliché, but at the same time, I feel like I ignore it too much as I constantly try to play catch-up against some perceived competitor in my life that I'm not even sure exists to begin with.
As I start to look ahead, I don't think I'm going to set a New Years' Resolution at this juncture. I want to read more often, write more often, be more consistent with my fitness goals, tackle my mental health struggles and build on my creative hobbies to the point that they hopefully blossom into something greater. The thing is, I should keep doing each of those things every year going forward, as long and as far as my body will take me. As I dip my toes into 2026, maybe new goals will reveal themselves to me, at which point I can them put into words in this journal. There are many branching paths for how things can turn out at this moment in my life. I am at a pretty good position right now, and I shouldn't take that for granted. I'm ready to roll up my sleeves and dig in to 2026. Wishing a healthy and prosperous new year for all!
More from me in December 2025: What Others Have Seen