At least it feels that way to me, every time I say or see 2025 - for some reason
it just feels so futury.
In the grand scheme of things, just for me personally, 2024 wasn't all that bad. I
can't say the same for things that were beyond my control (the one thing I had a say in was my vote, but that didn't turn out how I hoped it would), and those things will definitely bring challenges for the new
year. But I didn't have any major health issues this past year other than
dealing with a frozen shoulder (which is still in the process of 'thawing') and
an upper respiratory thing that caused me to lose my voice right when I needed
it to give a talk at Astronomy on Tap (I managed to croak my way through it, but
then I literally couldn't talk for three days afterwards - which probably made a
number of folks around me happy!). And I didn't get my other eye fixed this
year, but I do plan to have that done in 2025 since it's starting to annoy me
more quickly than I had expected. (And the first cataract surgery turned out to be a lot less of an
out-of-pocket expense than I wrote about last year since I got all of one of my
upfront costs back - I'm still not entirely sure why, which is frustrating since
more often than not, if you don't understand something with the US insurance
system, it will rarely end up in your favor!)
At work, things were absolutely crazy for the first quarter of the year in the
lead-up to the eclipse, just as I had expected. The eclipse event itself was amazing, although we had a lot more cloud cover than I would have liked,
even though historically our part of the country had a better chance of clear
skies that day. But you never know with weather! The crowds down at the UT Tower
were way larger than we had originally planned for, which makes me think that we
should have just had everyone gather in the stadium after all! But we still had
a lot of fun, crowds and clouds notwithstanding. And apparently all of that work
I did with both eclipses hadn't gone unnoticed since I won a College of Natural
Sciences Staff Excellence Award. It was the third one I had one over my
career so it didn't feel all that overwhelming at first - until the department
threw me a surprise party for it! That was quite special and included a cake and
flowers and a lovely card. It's nice to be appreciated!
Another fun work-related thing from 2024 was that I got to take our summer
research group out to McDonald Observatory for their observing run in late
June/early July and we had a blast! I actually managed to stay up through to
dawn the first night we were on the telescopes and I was proud of myself since it has been a long, long time
since I pulled an all-nighter. I didn't go through to dawn the other two nights
since I had to be awake enough to drive back on the final day, but I still hung
out in the control room until about 1 or 2 a.m. on both nights. It had been five years since I was last out there, so it was great to get back to the amazing dark skies of West Texas!
Checking in with the goals from 2024 -
As usual, I did Dry January, but overall I stayed about the same on weight and
my bloodwork wasn't great, but some of that was due to the fact that I went in
for my physical in January - right after the holidays - which wasn't all that
smart. So I'm going to push that back to at least February, or possibly even
March, for 2025.
If I had left my Goodreads goal at 25, like I said in last year's post, I would
have made it, but I got cocky and upped it to 30, which I then didn't quite
make it to. And about half of that was listening to the audiobooks of Martha Wells' Murderbot Diaries completely through twice because they are absolutely
brilliant! I also started to get back into listening to music more in 2024,
since that's what was calling me at the time. And I continued to work my way
through podcasts, TV shows, YouTube channels, etc. but I think I just need to
accept the reality that I'm interested in too many things and will never be able
to stay "caught up". Maybe my mantra for 2025 needs to be to
just enjoy things and not get too wrapped up in being a completionist. 😛 I did
do the "new to me" movie challenge again and technically missed two weeks - one
when I was out at the observatory and one during the Olympics (since NBC
actually did a good job with the streaming coverage and I could watch anything
and everything - and I did!) - but there were a couple of weeks in there that I
watched more than one "new to me" movie, so it all worked out in the end.
And as I feared, I didn't get much of a chance to get anything done with the
yard this year, thanks to a bad combination of weather, time availability, and a
frozen shoulder. So both the front and back yard are still a bit of a mess! Some
of that was beyond my control though, so I don't feel too bad about neglecting
it.
Goals for 2025
As usual, my crafty and stitching round-up and goals for the new year are over
at Lara's Loose Threads!
I'm going to continue to do Dry January this year, although I'll admit that I
did second-guess that on January 1st while watching my Texas Longhorns at the
Peach Bowl! And as I mentioned above, I'll go in for my annual physical a little
later this year so I can hopefully improve my eating habits a bit before I go
in. I didn't really overdo it too much this year at the holidays, but I still
think it would skew my numbers a bit so I'd prefer to get a reading that more
accurately reflects my everyday eating habits (which will hopefully involve a
little less fast food this year).
I often make vague "get more exercise" goals at the new year (to myself, if
nothing else), but this time I'm going to concentrate on trying to get out and walk more, at least on the weekends. I'm very lucky to live in a part of town
with lots of parks and nature areas within a 10-15 minute drive, so I want to
start taking advantage of that. I've even been toying with the idea of getting a
GoPro (or something similar) to record my walks, which might incentivize me
more. I also have an exercise machine up in the loft of the house that I really
should start using when time or weather doesn't permit getting outdoors. I also
bought a Texas State Parks pass that I hope to get out and use this year! Somewhere in there, I need to get back to working on the yard, but I might have to just give up and pay someone to clear everything out so we can start fresh since just taming what has been neglected for almost a decade is taking up all of the time so nothing new is getting done (like building garden beds, etc.). There is also quite a bit of old junk that needs to be taken care of from the backyard, so again, I might just pay someone to do that part! (Especially if it means I get to avoid the area that I think has the poison ivy.)
I'm going to try a 30 book Goodreads challenge again this year since I'd really
like to get back to listening to more audiobooks in the car and fewer podcasts.
As I said above, I need to back off trying to stay caught up with all of the
things all of the time and just go with the flow more. Actually, I think I
already do that to some extent, so it may be more accurate to say that I'll just stop guilting
myself over it! I'm also continuing with movie challenges, but I'm changing it
up a little. I have been slowly working my way chronologically through all of
the Disney feature films (in part to catch a bunch that I missed in the 80s and
90s), and I had been toying with picking some directors and trying to
watch all of their films, also in chronological order. So each week, my goal is
to watch at least one movie that is either new to me, the next in the Disney
watchlist, or the next one for the first batch of directors on my list. (I think
the director that will be the hardest to do is Alfred Hitchcock since it's going
to be hard to find some of his earlier films, I suspect - but I'll do what I
can!)
For many years I would have a financial goal in my New Year posts, but since I
did a pretty good job of meeting those goals for several years, I have finally
managed to get to a point where this year I will be almost completely debt free
(I'll still have a car payment for another two years, but that's it) for the first time in my
adult life, I think. After I got my final debt consolidation loan a few years
back, my financial situation improved dramatically to where I actually had
disposable income and with that loan finishing in a few months, I will
actually have quite a bit left over after bills each month, so I decided to
start putting some into some additional retirement savings. I'm lucky that I
already have the Teachers Retirement fund through my job (as well as Social
Security), but I figured it wouldn't hurt to stash some extra just in case. Some
of the rest of the 'extra' money is going into a vacation fund though, so I'm
not being a completely responsible adult! 😄 So one last goal of
2025 is to put enough towards the vacation fund to take a really great trip to
Ireland in 2026!
One final goal (?) will be to actually try to post more here and over at my
craft blog, especially since I'm not putting as much on social media these. I honestly
don't think that too many people read (or care to read) my posts either here or
on most social media, but if nothing else, they are a form of journaling for me
- I just put it out into the public!
That's it for now - I think a lot of us have a lot of work cut out for us in 2025, so LFG!