Looking Back On 2025, Looking Ahead To 2026

I have an annual tradition of reviewing the previous year and setting goals for the coming year. As a new year has just begun, that means it's time to continue this tradition by looking back on 2025 and looking ahead to 2026!

The previous articles in this tradition can be found here: 2023-2024, 2024-2025

Looking Back on 2025

My goals for 2025 were: Take care of my health—both physical and mental, play more games I haven't played before, make more progress on a game, accept the me God's made me to be (and trust in Him more), invest in relationships, and continue real-life dailies diligently.

So, how did I do on these goals?

Take Care of My Health—Both Physical & Mental

This was a sort of meta-health goal, combining several things. Notably, improving my diet, sleeping better (this was mostly about being more consistent with my bed time), and moving more were all physical goals and limiting grief-inducing media was pretty much the only mental health goal (though it is a good one).

It was interesting reading back on my goals and what I was thinking at the time and comparing that with my current thoughts. Frankly, on the improving my diet (quality up and quantity down), I don't think there's been a lot of change, and realistically, I don't think there will be much change for the foreseeable future (keeping in mind that I can't actually see any of the future). In other words, I need an environmental change. That said, I have become aware that some amount of the time I feel a sensation I think of as hunger, I'm actually just thirsty.

Sleep is a weird one. I've definitely continued to have my struggles, though more often this year getting caught up in binge reading has been the culprit. I've read a lot of Japanese light novels this last year (So I'm a Spider, So What?, Overlord, and That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime). In the process, I have found that reading before bed can help me fall asleep faster, as long as I don't get so caught up in the story that I fail to actually try to fall asleep at all. Interestingly, in the last month or two, I've somehow managed to gain a much better awareness of how long the process of getting ready for bed takes me, which has helped me with getting ready for bed early enough to make getting to sleep more consistent.

Moving more is also an odd one. I think that has happened, but mostly as I change activities. Like, when I change from doing something on my computer to reading or playing a game on my Switch, I often switched (heh) locations, and that resulted in perhaps slightly increased movement. I noted in last year's article that this sub goal would be difficult, though, and that has remained true.

The mental health one is also interesting. I'm not sure how I'm doing in that regard. Though...I think I've been doing OK. I currently feel like I'm tuned in enough, and there are a number of accounts on Blue Sky that I was following that I stopped following for the very reason I mentioned in this goal, which is that, while I generally agreed with them, I felt they were putting me in a bad frame of mind. It's tough to know how much to pay attention, you know? I want to pay some attention, but I want to be careful to not drown myself, either. So I think I'm mostly doing alright on this front right now.

Play More Games I Haven't Played Before

This is a pretty straightforward goal. I have a tendency to settle into some game, such as Guild Wars 2 or Elden Ring, and play it fairly exclusively. While cozy, I do want to see new games and gain new experiences, which is why I set this goal.

I did spend time playing familiar games, of course. I did play more Guild Wars 1 and Guild Wars 2, for example. However, I did manage to play more games! Looking through Dear Patrons... headers, it seems I played Scarlet Maiden, Unsolved Case, Unboxing the Cryptic Killer, Cookie Cutter (some), Elden Ring: Nightreign, Princess Peach: Showtime, Silksong (some), Parallel Experiment, Pokémon Legends: Z-A, Word Play, and I also started Dragon Quest XI.

That's a lot of games, actually! Well, some of them are being stretched a little. Cookie Cutter I played some in a previous year, I think, but I continued my playthrough of it some in the earlier part of this year. Similarly, I'd played, like, half of Princess Peach: Showtime, and then my favorite Let's Play channel started a playthrough, so I went back and finished it this year.

Word Play is a fun game about finding words from 16 letter tiles. It's kind of like Scrabble crossed with Balatro, as I understand it? (I haven't played Balatro.) So I played some of it, but it's the open-ended sort of game that doesn't really have a completed state, exactly. It is fun, though!

I also only started Dragon Quest XI right at the end of the year. I have been enjoying it a lot so far, though! I also only started Silksong because, while I loved Hollow Knight, Silksong proved too difficult for me to enjoy, so I gave up on it after a bit, which sucked because I love so much about it.

Three of those, Unsolved Case, Unboxing the Cryptic Killer, and Parallel Experiment, are cooperative puzzle games that I played with an Internet friend. She'd suggested we try the first of those, which is basically a short, free demo, and we enjoyed it enough that we got Unboxing the Cryptic Killer pretty much right away and had fun with that, too. Parallel Experiment is another in the series, and so of course we had to play it after it came out.

I definitely feel like I accomplished this goal, but I want to continue pursuing it.

Make More Progress On a Game

This was about continuing to work on an RPG Maker MV game that I'd been working on previously. I did work on it more this year, so this goal was achieved, though it's been on hiatus lately because I've shifted focus in terms of major creative projects (I'll elaborate more in goals for this year), so I definitely didn't get as much done on it as I'd hoped I would have at the time I wrote last year's article. I do want to get back to it at some point, though!

Accept the Me God's Made Me to Be (And Trust In Him More)

This one is hard to summarize, and I recommend reading the entire (admittedly lengthy) section for a fuller context. Still, to try and summarize it, this is about letting go of feeling like I need to conform to human-supplied concepts of who I ought to be (regardless of the source or origin of those thoughts) and instead accept the me that God has made me to be.

The challenges with doing that are mostly twofold. The first is that conformity looks like security. It's a way to cheat at finding acceptance, but the cost of that cheating is loneliness. In other words, you aren't really accepted. The second challenge is that I need more trust in God's ability to communicate with me. Important aspects of who I am feel like they contradict Christian culture, and that makes it hard to trust that they are really who God has made me to be, and that those important aspects are things God wants to be a part of me. But He does, and furthermore, I do believe that, somehow, He is glorified by them.

In short, this is about letting go of fear and reaching out to my Creator with the love of my full person, and finding love for my full person is waiting for me; indeed, it reached out to me first.

So that's a summary, but how'd I do? I'd say I made progress, but I still have a ways to go.

How to explain...

It's like some areas are a lot better, while others are only a little better. Some areas of struggle feel more intense in a way? Yeah, this is all way too vague.

I suppose it's like...I'm much more accepting of who I am, and my trust in God has increased, but I'm still struggling with doubts in the midst of that trust. I'm also struggling with knowing how to communicate who I am. So, I've made progress, but there's still progress to make. I think I've made the most progress in letting go of...negative emotions around not conforming to certain images or molds of what people say a Christian man should look like. I'm still searching for my place in the world, but I think I've got a possible lead. I am trusting God more, but I need a sort of reciprocal of that; most of my doubts are centered on myself, but in a way, that's also not trusting God. This is complicated and hard to explain, but it largely has to do with understanding what it means for Jesus to be my shepherd and whether or not I actually trust Him to be able to communicate to me in ways that I can trust and understand while also guiding me away from deceit (self-derived or otherwise) and teaching me discernment.

So, yeah. Like I said, progress has been made, but there's more progress to make, too.

Invest In Relationships

This largely had to do with wanting to spend more time with people, with an important note that often the Internet is one-way and parasocial. I want to spend more time hanging out with friends, which also requires friends to hang out with. Also, there was some kind of ambitious idea about a relationships curriculum or class or something (needless to say, that particular part of this goal did not happen).

I'm not sure much has changed when compared to last year, but that isn't to say nothing did. I've spent a bit more time hanging out with people. For example, I played those puzzles games I mentioned earlier with a friend, and a college friend and I made plans to play Guild Wars 1 together that sometimes happened (there have been a lot of struggles, but at least even when we can't play, we've been able to chat sometimes). I also feel like I've built up a bit more connection with folks at the Magic: The Gathering weekly event my local game store runs. I wouldn't call those relationships close or anything, but they're also there and shouldn't be ignored.

So there's been a bit more time spent on relationships, but not quite as much as I'd like. Even so, little bits of progress are still progress.

Continue Real-Life Dailies Diligently

This was a goal inspired by the dailies system of Guild Wars 2, though I imagine many other online games also have the concept of a refreshing set of daily objectives. I'd set up a system in my Task Tracker software to mimic that idea so that it'd inspire me to work a little bit each day on a set of goals of mine.

While I did keep this up for a good chunk of the year, it inevitably fell prey to the problem I have with routines in general, which is that they grind on me. I do think they were useful, but in the end, I couldn't keep them up for psychological reasons.

With one exception.

That exception was, oddly enough, exercise. Yes, that's right: I basically set a New Years Resolution to exercise more and kept it. Though, it probably helped that my sister joined in with me. Initially, we were doing sit ups and pushups six days a week, alternating daily which one we did (so sit ups Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday and pushups Monday, Wednesday, and Friday). Later in the year, we also added arm curls to the mix.

We started these in December of 2024, and I had a loose goal of being able to do 50 sit ups and 50 pushups by the end of last year. This is a goal that we've blown past. We regularly do 60 sit ups (because they suck; we've both done 100 of them a few times, but it takes ages; maybe our technique is slow or something). My sister is regularly doing 70 pushups and I'm regularly doing 80.

It's been so cool to see this progress! We started with 10 of each, and to some extent, those were a struggle. When it was a year later and I'd hit 150% of my goal, well, that felt pretty good!

Summary of Last Year

I stated in the previous article that this last year was to be about relationships. It's honestly hard for me to evaluate that, though. Was it better than previous years? Maybe a bit? Probably? But it still feels like it's far below where I want things to be. That makes it hard to evaluate. The biggest thing is that it's hard to judge trends. Most of what I'm longing for are big enough changes that the smaller stuff that has happened, while good, doesn't quite address those longings.

That said, it does seem like I did OK on a lot of these goals. Many of them fell short of what I'd hoped for, at least on the upper end, but I don't think any of them fell below the sort of bottom end of the range, either, and that seems like a win to me.

I do find it funny that I explicitly dropped goals around streaming, and yet I ended up streaming pretty consistently on Fridays in the latter part of the year. I mean, I mentioned streaming. It was a sort of soft goal. It just amuses me, is all.

Looking Ahead to 2026

One of the things that's very interesting to me, looking back over the events of 2025, is that one of the huge things that happened was that I got into Japanese light novels. I mentioned this previously in the sleep section, but to go into some more detail, it began with me watching the So I'm a Spider, So What? anime and wanting to know more. I decided to read the manga, so I asked my sister to check it out from the library for me (she's the library-using person; I don't even have a card). This she did, but when we went to get the second issue, she made a rather blessed mistake and checked out the second light novel instead. (In her defense, it's actually pretty confusing which book is the light novel and which is the manga, especially the way the library presents them. You kind of have to know what you're looking for.)

This accident feels providential to me. Since I had it anyway, I decided to go ahead and read it, and I was hooked. This resulted in a ravenous desire for the rest of the series, and once I read them, I wanted my own copies: I was convinced that I'd want to read So I'm a Spider, So What? many more times. That's proven very true. My sister kindly got the series for me (all 16 books) as a sort of combination birthday and Christmas present. I'm rereading the series for the third time right now.

I also decided to read the Overlord light novels, another anime I'd overall enjoyed, and the That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime ones, too. (I liked the latter more because the former light novels really emphasize Ains's imposter syndrome, which I didn't enjoy so much.) That's a lot of reading!

Probably the biggest thing to come out of all of this is that reading Spider inspired me to start writing my own story. I've dabbled in writing short stories before, but something about the presentation and style of Spider (along with the worldbuilding) was incredibly inspiring to me. The result is that I've actually started working on a novel. This is something I could not have predicted at the start of the year, but it's been very defining for the latter half of last year for me.

Finish a Major Project

I've finished a lot of smaller projects (blog posts, for example, or individual videos or streams), but I haven't finished many major ones. I suppose there are some video ones that might count (the Guild Wars 1 skill review project and slow playthrough both qualify, I'd argue), but this goal is primarily about two very specific things.

Thing the first is the novel I was mentioning in the previous section. I'd like to finish it this coming year. Given how much progress I've made on it, that seems very reasonable to accomplish to me, but there are hurdles beyond writing it. I'll need to learn more about actually getting it published, for example. I'll also need to figure out cover art. Thankfully, I know people who I can talk to about these things, so I know I'll be able to get help and advice.

The second thing is a project I've been working on with a college friend. I'm not going to go into details, but we've been collaborating on something for a while now, and I think both of us would like to see it finished this coming year.

There is a very tiny chance I might finish some kind of game project, but that's such an outside chance I only mention it because I include that in this category. It's definitely not something to expect.

Be More Time Conscious

This is a weird one to know how to phrase. Another contender was to be more honest about time. This goal is really about being aware of how long things take, but from two different angles.

The first is pretty straightforward, and it has to do with knowing how long regular life activities take and making time for them. Really, this is about my sleep schedule. I have two major things I want to have done before going to sleep for the night: cleaning my teeth and writing up Dear Patrons..., my daily journal entry for my Patreon. Cleaning my teeth takes about 15 minutes all told, which seems long, but it includes flossing, brushing, rinsing, and cleaning up and putting things away. Individually, none of those take all that long, but they all add up. I need to account for that. Writing Dear Patrons... takes a variable length of time, but budgeting 30 minutes is pretty reasonable. That means it takes me around 45 minutes to get those things done, which means I need to be aware of the time and get to them before it gets late. If I don't, then finishing them will only keep me up later.

The second is where the honesty about time thing comes in. This is primarily about unbounded activities, like playing a game. For whatever reason, I feel like I have more time for a two-hour YouTube video than for playing a game, even though that's a pretty hefty chunk of time. In other words, I want to overcome weird psychological nonsense that functionally confuses me about how I can use my time so that I can spend more of my time doing the things I want to do with it.

Taken together, this really is about being more conscious about time, but in a different sort of way than I commonly hear time management get talked about. At least, it feels different to me, and in a meaningful way that makes it a lot easier for me to approach. So, fundamentally, I want to use my time better, by which I mean more aligned with my priorities.

Keep Playing More Games

This remains important to me, and so I want to keep it up!

There's not a ton to say here, but the previous topic plays into it quite a bit. I need to better recognize the time I do have for playing games.

Keep Up the Exercise

I'm not sure this needs an explanation, but just to say it anyway, I want to keep up the exercises I've been doing with my sister. Currently, that's walks (hikes, really), pushups, sit ups, and arm curls. There's a chance we'll add exercises to those, but right now, those are what we're doing, and I want to keep them up.

Remember That I Can't See the Future

So much of my angst comes from forgetting that I can't see the future. Like, I have hopes, hopes that I believe God has given me, but they feel unattainable. I can't see the path. The trajectory my life appears to be on doesn't lead to them. But that's assuming I can see the future, and I can't. I can make predictions, I can draw lines, but all that amounts to is speculation that's nothing more than whatever the opposite of wishful thinking is.

A couple of poignant national examples of this inability to see the future are COVID in 2020 and the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Sure, those who knew to pay attention may have been aware (especially regarding COVID), but for most of us, they struck suddenly and changed things drastically, and in ways we would not have been expecting a mere three months before.

A more personal example is one that's come up multiple times already: My sudden plunge into Japanese light novels and what that's inspired in me. Back in 2024, I couldn't have predicted that they would be such a defining force for 2025. They weren't on my radar at all. If you'd have asked me how many books I expected to read in 2025, I would've guessed maybe two, give or take. The actual number was over fifty.

So, I don't know what the future holds, but I think I do, which results in unnecessary angst. Even plans that people have stated are nothing other than intentions. Sure, they might want to fulfill them, and often they will, but there is no guarantee of that. Think of all of the plans that COVID caused to be cancelled.

This isn't to say that there isn't value to planning, because there clearly is. But I need to remember that only God knows the future, and the only future I can know is what He chooses to reveal, and that must be believed by faith.

Assume Better of Others

I've talked about this before, though I don't recall where all I've done so, but I have a tendency to assume that others are judgmental in certain ways, and then act accordingly to try and protect myself from that judgment. But the truth is, I know, on average, almost nothing about anyone else.

Social media doesn't help with this, as it tends to reward the most aggressive and absolute positions and speech. In other words, I need to not assume that social media is representative of the average person.

Really, this is about connections. If I want to be able to genuinely connect with people, I need to be open to learning who they are and letting them learn who I am. That risks rejection and judgment, but the reward is worth it. Of course, there is a proper pacing to things, so really, this is mostly about remembering how little I know about others and trying to reduce the number of assumptions I make about them.

Make Time for Pet Projects

I have big projects that I want to focus my energies on, and that's good to do, but I also think it's good for me to take small breaks from them to work on other things. In other words, I have a lot of little projects sitting on the backburner, and it'd be good to move them to the main burner every now and then.

The one I'm thinking of right now is an updated music player (I wrote my own program so it'd have the features I want, but the current one I'm using is now lacking features I want, so I want to make a new one). I did work on it a bunch last year, while I was doing the Real-Life Dailies, but then it fell by the wayside when I was working on a program to help me track data for my novel and I wanted to stop getting wires crossed programmatically, so it went back on the backburner. I'd like to get back to it and finish it!

Mostly, this is about giving myself permission to make these high enough priorities to give them some time every now and then; to say that my big projects can go on the backburner for a week or two while I do something else.

Remember These Goals

Something that struck me as I read last year's article in preparation for this one was how much even the 2024 goals still felt relevant. It made me realize how easy it is to forget things unless we make the effort to remember them. I don't want the goals for this year to be forgotten; achieved because I happen to, not because I intentionally tried to.

I think what I'll do for this is change my computer's lock screen image to contain this list of goals. That way, I'll be reminded of them when I log into my computer each day. I'll be curious to see how that goes!

Conclusion

If last year's theme was supposed to be relationships, then I think this year's theme is something along the lines of honesty. I want to be more honest about how my time gets filled, I want to be more honest about others, and I want to be more honest about myself and my limitations. Yes, thinking about these, overall, there seems to be a theme of honesty to me. That feels correct, and in a way, freeing.

Thank you for reading.

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