I’m never quite sure how I feel about New Year’s resolutions.
On one hand, Grounded-In-Logic Me is not much of a believer in the idea that your life will somehow change because of an arbitrary date on the calendar. If we’re being honest, New Year’s Day was just the day that days started getting noticeably longer after the winter solstice. In short, folks decided to party once they were convinced the sun wasn’t burning out. SILLY PEASANTS! So calibrating your life to something so arbitrary feels kinda silly.
On the other hand, what I have noticed in recent years is that when you’ve got two weeks off work and life slows down for a bit, you have more time to sit around and take stock of how your life is going. So while I refuse to give any DIRECT credit to the calendar, I suppose the new year can drive change, though it’s one of those “correlation is not causation” things where the removal from routine is the more valuable thing. Last year, for instance, I got back to the gym — not because the calendar said “January” but because not being at work for almost two weeks made me hyper-aware of how much of a slug I was being. (And OK… the fact that my yearly physical happened in December and I got a scolding from my doctor around the same time might have helped… to-MAY-to, to-MAH-to.)
So while swearing up and down that I “don’t do resolutions”, here’s some things I’ll be working on in 2025… big, small, silly, serious. I’ll probably start with the big/serious stuff and work toward the smaller items toward the end.
Empty That Nest!
My first goal, and in some ways, the one that’s going to drive a lot of the others, is to get unstuck on the process of selling my house. To back up a little bit, I became an empty-nester in April 2024, and I’ve decided that I don’t really have an appetite for owning a house of mostly empty rooms… especially with it being an older house that requires a lot of upkeep. (Also, neither of my kids wants to stay in Pittsburgh and one has already left, so it’s not like I’d be keeping “McDonald Manor” for either of them to inherit.) I’ve already started to work on de-cluttering and getting it ready to sell, but I’ll admit I hit a bit of a wall in the September/October timeframe. I could blame work, football season, or any number of things, but the net effect is I haven’t kept the forward momentum like I’d hoped. So 2025 will be the year to get things rolling again, and hopefully (this shit had better not take another full year) drive it to completion.
Fitness Journey 2: Fitness Boogaloo
The good news is I dropped 45 or 50 pounds in 2024 (depending on whose scale I choose to believe) so some of this is simply maintaining the progress I’ve already made. But it does feel like I’ve kind of plateaued in recent weeks and I want to get my weight down even more. I feel like 200-220 is the sweet spot here: I don’t think I’ll ever be the 185 that the ideal weight chart claims I should be, but 200-220 would be realistic while also being about as light as I’ve been for most of my adult life. Except for that stomach bug back in the 90s where I was puking for three days straight; I think I dropped into the 190s for that.
Maybe it’s changing my workouts. Maybe it’s refining what I eat — I count calories, but don’t track specific nutrients or anything like that. Perhaps it’s even adding running back to the mix (I was running regularly in the 2015-17 timeframe), though that was always a little rough on the knees, which I can’t imagine has improved with more years on the odometer.
Or maybe things will start moving forward again once football season ends and I quit going out for beer and wings once a week. Could be that too.
The Write Stuff
This isn’t the first or last time I’ve been on this particular kick, but I need to channel my writing into something more… productive, substantial, choose your adjective. I’ve spent a lot of time on the Q&A site Quora over the years, which I guess scratches the itch (and on pure word-count, it might add up to a book or two), but a) it’s all a bit jumbly and unfocused, and b) that place becomes more and more of a shitshow by the day. So, for the moment, the plan is to whip this site into better shape and write more consistently; at least I’ll be at the helm of my own ship, rather than just drifting with the currents of random strangers’ questions. (Though I might still duck my head into Quora just to mine it for ideas to bring over here.)
Not Storming The US Capitol And Attempting To Disrupt The Peaceful Transfer Of Power
Didn’t think we needed to spell this one out, but… it’s the times we live in, I guess….
There’s a few other “big” things on the list, but some of those are more private. Among other reasons, some of them intersect with other people, and while I don’t mind putting my own business in the street, I’m always a little leery of airing OTHER people’s business in public. Quoth Austin Powers: “that sort of thing’s not my bag, baby”. So let’s just table those for now, with the idea I may come back to them down the road.
Meanwhile, let’s turn to the more fun/lighthearted stuff…. the reindeer games, if you will.
Hit The Road, Jack
Now that I’m an empty-nester, I feel like travel is one of those things I’ve neglected over the years. I did a fair amount of travel as an IT consultant in my 30s, but that was almost entirely for work, and I rarely got to really experience the places I was visiting as a traveler. I do pretty well on those “how many states have you visited?” quizzes, but “airport, job-site, hotel, lather, rinse, repeat” is no way to see the world.
I have standing invitations to visit various friends and family in different cities, I haven’t been out of the country since 2001, and… I think I’d like to get moving (figuratively and literally) on some of that. I still think the house stuff takes priority and drives the agenda a bit, but once I put that in the rear-view mirror, I wouldn’t mind seeing a bit more of the world.
(There’s also a simple logistical issue that my home state of PA is switching to RealID in 2025, and the same documents you need for that are the ones you need for renewing your passport. Some of the paperwork shuffling HAS to happen as a matter of necessity even if the travel doesn’t come together right away.)
A Little Night Music
I always feel guilty I’m not doing more with music. I am an owner of guitars, though “play” is probably an ambitious verb choice. During the election season, I bought a pair of drum sticks and a drumming pad to burn off nervous energy, and there’s an electronic drum set that’s currently in limbo: it belongs to my son, but he doesn’t really have room for it in his new place (and I’d have to ship it across the country as well). Now that I’ve accumulated an entire band’s worth of instruments, I ought to at least bang out “Hot Cross Buns” every once in a while or something.
Shall We Play A Game?
Let’s talk video games for a minute. I’m not going to ever renounce gaming as a hobby (though some Gamers(tm) make my skin crawl), but I’ve got a serious case of the Backlog Blues. I buy games — in my partial defense, I usually wait for stuff to go on sale, so I’m at least being semi-responsible on the money side — but then I never really get around to playing them. Sometimes it’s pursuing other activities, but sometimes it’s just playing the same few treadmill-y games rather than experiencing something new. I don’t know that I need to change how much I play, but I do feel like I need to… for lack of a less pretentious way of putting it… play with more intent when I pick up a controller. Have a sense of how long I’m going to play for or what in-game goal I’m going to try and reach so I’m not just chasing flashing lights and beeping noises. And then move on to something else when I hit that goal, so I’m not just spinning my mental wheels.
Anyhow, I feel like that’s a pretty good list to get started with. For someone who doesn’t do resolutions, it seems I’ve managed to stumble into a few of them by accident anyway. So… let’s get to it.
Mental Zoomies 