Goals in 2025

I try to avoid the “new year, new me” or “it’s a new year, let’s all make resolutions” trains. I generally find them trite and, for me, ripe with the smell of ADHD short-term focus - rabbit holes to dive down while the dopamine is hot, but soon to be cast aside like the previous 293847 strings. That said, the change of the calendar does breed reflection, and there’s nothing wrong with a little healthy introspection. So to that end, and after some time spent inside my own head, here’s some thoughts about things to do in 2025.

Scroll less, write more

I’m out of practice. I remember a time where it was simple to sit down and pound out a few paragraphs of words - they may not have been well written without more work, or sensible in their order, but at least they were on the page and ready to be shaped into a coherent message. As life has gone on, and I have allowed my focus muscle to get out of shape by being pulled in lots of different directions, that has become more and more of a distant memory. That hasn’t stopped the thoughts and revelations from flowing through my brain, though - it’s just stopped me from being able to communicate things outward; or, more realistically said, it’s stopped me from caring if I am communicating clearly outward.

I was listening to a podcast the other day, and the guest said an interesting sentence - nothing that conceptually I hadn’t heard or understood before, but it took on a little new perspective. Roughly paraphrased:

It doesn’t matter if you’re thinking at a level 8; if you can only communicate at a level 2, people will assume you are understanding at a level 2.

I’ve said similar things before (“if you can’t explain clearly what you’re talking about, you don’t understand it thoroughly”), but didn’t have the inward focus until that moment. Big thoughts and big concepts require large communication, and I have not practiced that muscle in too long.

So, the “goal”: write something long-form that conveys a concept or idea once per week. It doesn’t have to be good or coherent - it just needs to be a few hundred words or more, and attempt to explain one of the many, many, many things bouncing around my head from concepts of communication to privacy first steps to threat modeling to projects that I’m currently working on. Just take the time that may have been filled with scrolling and write.

Find music again

Music is good for us

I can’t count the hours that have been spent at my piano or guitar or singing or mixing or recording or going to performances or with headphones on or in some way actively engaging with music. It’s practically part of my DNA. Children and family and life commitments determine that realistically that cannot happen at the same scale any more, but right now it’s out of balance. Between COVID, TBI, stress, and just plain life, it’s clear that the pendulum needs to swing back in the other direction somewhat.

Maybe I’ll finally get around to throwing some things up online again; maybe it will just be in my living room. But either way, the freedom and emotion of just letting go in an instrument need to come back.

Read

Really, it’s “learn”, but not via web surfing or YouTube tutorials. As with writing, reading long form and in-depth communication is a learned skill, and one that I have been falling out of practice on. The polymath in me craves learning across any and all subjects, but the desire to slow down and become more introspective requires a bit more focus.

Since the over-arching theme of the year seems to be “communication,” it will probably have a focus on philosophy and sociology - how to see, and understand, and help improve the world around us. Perhaps some Nietzsche if I’m feeling masochistic, definitely C.S. Lewis, probably more of the teachings of Buddha and the way of the unformed block.

Stop letting perfect be the enemy of good

Self-explanatory, I think, but you never know. I’ve trained myself so well to do the very best at everything that I’ve forgotten that life is an iterative process. Putting things out with “imperfections” isn’t a sign of failure or “not good enough” - it’s a step in the process, and depending on the subject matter might already be at excellence and now I’m just quibbling with myself over the last 2%.

So…yeah. Some thoughts about yesterday, and some things about tomorrow. We’ll see what comes of it.