It dawns on me that the last thing I published (at the time of starting this draft) was actually a review of the resolutions I had set for 2024. The lack of content published is not lost on me... but I'm just embracing my life full of partially-written, not-yet-finished entries. When I was in grade school, at the start of the year, I remember watching my sister go through and set up some of her school supplies. You know, writing the labels for each course on the requisite spiral notebook (those Five Star journals were the best; college-ruled only), unpacking pencils and splitting them across notebooks, setting up binders with loose leaf, etc. The ritual of preparing smooth and untarnished materials, integrity intact, unmarred by weeks of being shoved into and yanked out of backpacks, is something I'm nostalgic for now (though my ever-growing awareness of over-consumption and plastic consumption makes me cringe for the volume of poorly-made junk that did not last through the year).
Of course, I'm looking at my open Figma window and seeing the various frames I've used to organize my 2025 resolutions. I've got a page littered with various house projects, all organized by room (though I see now putting this in a spreadsheet with estimate time-to-completion as well as cost for materials might be a better investment of my time). I have a second page with columns for Spiritual & Emotional resolutions, alongside Physical, Mental, Social, Romantic, and Financial goals for the year.
The sheer quantity of goals I set last year made achievement feel less like an all-or-nothing game and more like a collection of small victories. I could tick off the simple ones—getting the haircut, finishing that book I’d abandoned, finally organizing the kitchen bathroom—and still have the bigger, long-haul goals waiting on the back-burner. This method wound up reframing my view of "success" throughout the year. If I didn't get 100% of my resolutions done, it wasn't a wash—I've clearly had other successes (as an aside, apparently people think that em dashes are an indicator of AI-generated content? Boo! Coming soon to a theater near you: a documentary about reverse Turing tests conducted via textual analysis for Oxford commas). I can look past what I didn't do and see what I did do through the year.
This time around, I’m taking a more structured approach. Ever the UX practitioner, I've found myself not only canceling my Adobe Illustrator subscription (say it ain't so!) to planning friend's wedding invites in Figma. For myself, though? Figma frames, content neatly sorted by category, are my way of making the nebulous, often chaotic nature of goal-setting feel tangible.
There’s something uniquely fulfilling about laying it all out visually, and the endless ability to rearrange. The Spiritual & Emotional section feels just as weighty as the Financial or Physical one, if not more (it was the first one I wrote and started to fill out). My goals here are the most explicit: in what, how, and when I pursue Christ and understanding the Word.
I might regret documenting this for the entire rotting internet to see, but I’m reminding myself that acknowledging desires isn’t the same as idolizing them. I included a Romantic section in my planning space this year, increasing the focus from last year's simple "start dating again." I don't have to broadcast it here, but I can set intentions for how I approach dating and relationships without treating them like a checkbox to be completed by December 31st.
And maybe that’s the real shift I’m experiencing in how I approach resolutions. They aren’t just a to-do list—they’re a reflection of the life I’m shaping, a blueprint for the kind of person I want to be. Some goals will get done, some won’t, and some will evolve into something entirely different. But the act of setting them, thoughtfully considering where I want my energy to go, is valuable in itself.
In fact, I'm wondering if there is a spiritual imperative to this sort of goal-setting. Not a salvation-barring sacrament but instead a need born of awareness. The awareness and humility of the Gospel truth necessitates a heart-check, and routine introspection to understand the heart and the motive of what we're doing. God-fearing and Biblically-based community assists in identifying issues, of course, but we cannot be blind and ignorant of our own potential weak spots.
I'm looking forward to sharing what I've done and have yet to do this year from the lists I'm crafting! I've gotten quite a few big tasks either tackled or in-process. I told myself I need to do some of the tedious tasks before I get to do fun tasks. To that end, I've done some of the nastiest tasks on this list (and rewarded myself by replacing my lemon tree that did not survive the freezes and the aggressive wind-storms we had here this past week). Here's to the next 9 months (yikes! where did time go!?) and my efforts to commit to what I take on and see projects through fully.
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