The Year Of Settling Down(ish): 2025 Goals & Accomplishments

by A Purple Life, posted in Annual Accomplishments, Blogging, Early Retirement, Film, Finance, Fitness, Food, Hobbies, Keto, Musings, Relationships, Travel

Throughout the year, I like to jot down new things I’ve learned, read, watched and experienced to try and remember what each year entailed. I then summarize all of that in my annual goals and accomplishments posts.

The goal of these posts is not just to curate what I’ve been up to, but also to document how I’ve changed from one year to the next and how I’ve grown as a person. I also like to give each year a theme in retrospect.

I wasn’t sure what this year’s theme would be but upon reflection, it became clear 🙂 . I’ve decided that 2025 has been The Year Of Settling Down(ish). 

In case you’ve missed it, here are all the posts of why that’s this year’s theme:

And in case you’re curious about my goals in previous years, here are all of those: 

Now that all of that set up is out of the way, let’s jump into all the goals I had this year and if I accomplished them. 

Physical

My main physical goals this year were to feel better from my running injury and to at least maintain my 30 lb weight loss from last year. And I’m 2 for 2!

Food

I maintained my 30 lb loss from last year while traveling the world, which I think is a large accomplishment. Weight loss is often a yo-yo, and maintaining a loss is a challenge in and of itself, so I’m really proud of this. 

I did this by mapping out how many days I would eat keto and at a calorie deficit based on my travels, and I stuck to my plan! In 2025 I ate keto 65% of the time and took 128 days off to explore the cuisine of the new countries we lived in. 

In addition to maintaining, I also lost an additional 5 lbs for a total of 35 lbs down. Not bad at all 🙂 . I still have a few pandemic pounds I’d prefer to lose, but that can wait until I’m traveling less and can focus on cooking instead of exploring new cuisines. 

Like many things in my life, it helped to have a plan. At the beginning of the year I created the chart below and made guesses about when I would want to go off keto based on where I would be in the world.

I mostly planned to eat keto when I was in places I’d been before and had already explored the restaurants (like when I visit family). And I planned to go off keto when I was in new cities and countries.

Green shows days on keto and orange days off keto

So when I ate keto (net 20g carbs), I stuck to a calorie deficit and made sure I hit my protein goals (2 g protein per kg of lean body mass) to keep my growing muscles happy. This year I continued to use the app Cronometer to make tracking this super easy even in other countries and languages.

I like to note any new keto concoctions I discover each year and this year I discovered that whipping Greek Yogurt and my beloved Isopure Zero Carb Vanilla or Zero Carb Cookies and Cream together, makes a delicious light, fluffy and sweet dessert.

Also last year I mentioned that I found Cinnamon Apple Spice Tea from Celestial Seasonings as a wonderful herbal tea that somehow seemed to also help on the rare occasions when I still felt hungry after eating my calories for the day. Well this year I have a new love that’s even better: Harney & Sons Hot Cinnamon Sachets! 

It is a black tea so I can’t drink it at night, but they do have a Decaf Version – I just didn’t enjoy it for some reason. So I’ll just load up on the OG version during the day and enjoy my Cinnamon Apple at night 😉 . 

Previously I’ve always used teabags and Harney & Sons taught me about “Sachets.” Here’s an article of theirs that details the difference, but in essence, sachets contain whole tea leaves and teabags contain broken leaves. So I guess I’m a tea snob now 🙂 . 

Alcohol

Since I was logging everything that went into my body, alcohol was a part of that. I was curious how many days I would consume alcohol this year. I love exploring a new place through their specialties, which include beer and wine.

And it turns out that I had a drink on 18% of the days in 2025 which means I didn’t have it on 298 days, which is kind of like doing 3 of the 100 day alcohol free challenges that I did in 2020. But overall my consumption is less than previous years and definitely way less than when I was working and looking for an easy way to relax. I’ll take the positive trend!

Exercise

My exercise this year was different than previous years. As I’ve mentioned in my monthly recaps, last year was the Year Of Fitness and it seemed that I “fitness-ed” too much 🙂 . I ran so much that my knee started hurting so I stopped running until it felt better. 

I thought that would be that, but my 36 year old body had another idea. My knee pain came back and then started radiating to my hip and lower back. Uh oh 🙂 . So I made some changes to fix that.

Physical Therapy

I spent about $1,000 going to 8 PT sessions in Seattle and started to feel a little better. However, as life goes, I only started feeling a lot better when I started doing exercises from free YouTube videos 🙂 . 

Yoga/Pilates

Jessica Valant claims to be a PT and she has some amazing videos that seemed to be the biggest part of me finally becoming pain free later this year. Here’s are my favorite videos of hers that I do often:  

Heavy Lifting

I’m also back to lifting heavy and I love it so much! In the fall we bought a squat rack and have been lifting 3x a week. I’ve been doing it barefoot, which is new for me but feels WAY better than when I wore shoes. I feel a lot more stable, which is great. 

I’ve once again been using the Stronglifts 5×5 program, which consists of the below exercises. I’ve provided links to their very detailed and helpful guides of how to do each exercise. 

DAY A

  1. Squat 5×5
  2. Bench Press 5×5
  3. Barbell Row 5×5

DAY B

  1. Squat 5×5
  2. Overhead Press 5×5
  3. Deadlift 1×5

At the time of writing this, I’ve been lifting again less than a month and I’m already shocked with my progress. I started squatting with the empty 45lb bar and 3 weeks later the 45lb bar felt as light as air.

Say whaaat?! I’m amazed at what the human body can do and am excited to keep lifting consistently when we’re home and keep seeing those gains. My back/hip/knee also feel better than ever.

Old Lady Adjustments

Another adjustment this year is that I got new luggage. For almost 5 years I used a 40L Backpack and a tote that I put on my shoulder.

With my injury, I didn’t want to put additional weight on my back and shoulder so I got a new carry-on: the TravelPro Platinum Elite 21″ Spinner. I also replaced my tote with the TravelPro Platinum Elite Backpack. Both are so well designed that I feel like they carrying themselves 🙂 .

I’ll definitely be writing a post about these pieces of luggage because I love them a ridiculous amount. Between the above exercises, changing my luggage and upgrading my pillows to this knee pillow and this head pillow, I’m feeling WAY better! 

Going Forward

So I feel like I’m finally back to baseline, which is great 🙂 . I’m not sure if my future includes running again, but I hope so. I’m going to keep lifting, walking and doing pilates because it makes me feel amazing. 

Vitamins

I’m still using this adorable grapefruit pill holder to organize my vitamins and I’ve continued using my Monday morning technique I mentioned last year.

I started intentionally filling my entire pill holder on Mondays so I can easily count what day I’m on and if I’ve taken my pills or not based on that. Genius 😉 . I still take Vitamin D and Iron daily, but I’ve stopped taking a daily Allergy Pill since I’ve seemed fine without it.

Sleep

My sleep this year was pretty awesome. I rate my sleep every month in my monthly recaps and it rarely went below 80/100, which I’m really proud of since I used to SUCK at sleep. I’m a lot better these days, but if I do have an issue falling asleep after laying there for like an hour, I do take a Melatonin, which I’ve found helpful. 

Haircare

So I don’t know if it’s because I now have a homebase to put my stuff in, or that companies like my beloved Ethique are coming up with more travel and environmentally friendly beauty solutions, or just that I’m getting older (hello 36…) and my hair is changing as I get more grays, but this year I dove into the world of curly haircare.

Earlier this year I started reading up about split ends and how they can negatively affect your whole head of hair. I think I had heard this before, but I seemed to never get split ends in the past and my hair remained healthy and happy without me having to do anything (ah the ease of youth 😉 ). But that doesn’t seem to be the case anymore.

So I learned how to cut my own split ends by searching for someone who has my same type of hair (3C I believe). I took my Partner’s hair scissors, (I learned how to cut his hair like a fancy barber during the pandemic 😉 ) and followed the instructions and I was shocked at how my hair instantly changed.

It was curlier, softer and looked more full just from getting rid of a few centimeters of split ends. So I started doing that every 6 weeks like the video above suggests and my hair hasn’t looked this happy in a long time 🙂 .

Next, I looked into how to care for my increasing number of gray hairs, which are a different texture than the rest of my hair. Everything I read said hydrate, hydrate, hydrate!

So that was my next step. I started researching hair masks, leave-in conditioners and other things that can help hydrate my hair more than I usually do. I’m still testing out a lot of different products to find my ideal hair routine, but I’ll be sure to let y’all know what I end up loving it in case it can help anyone else who is also looking for healthier curly hair.

Nail Stickers

I’m still obsessed with Dashing Diva nail stickers and themed nails in particular. This year I wore themed stickers for a lot of occasions, such as Valentine’s Day, Juneteenth, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years. 

In fact, I wore 3 different ones for Halloween, 2 for Thanksgiving and 10 for the Winter Holidays (don’t judge me!). I had no idea this would be such a big deal for me, but I absolutely love looking down and seeing beautiful nails that take me minutes to apply.

They make me happy and hilariously, it’s even made another of my hobbies more fun. Since knitting involves staring at my fingers holding knitting needles for hours at a time, it gives me a lot of time to appreciate when my nails are on point 🙂 . 

Anyway, since this is my second year of this nail sticker obsession, I’ve learned how to make them even more awesome. I’ve also tried a few products that I really didn’t like. Let’s see which is which 🙂 . 

New Product Yays!

When I first started using these Gloss nail stickers, a YouTube video I watched recommended using Cuticle Oil to take them off, which continues to be the easiest and best solution for getting these stickers off easily and not drying out my nails like nail polish remover would.

And based on advice from that same YouTuber, I had been using Dental Picks to get the stickers off while waiting for the cuticle oil to dissolve the nail adhesive. However, based on the same YouTuber’s recommendation for another type of nail sticker, I tried using a Wooden Cuticle Stick instead to remove the Gloss nail stickers and it was a GAMECHANGER! It’s even easier than the picks, so it’s became my new sticker removal method going forward. 

New Product Nays 🙁

I tried out Dashing Diva’s nail sticker remover, Magic Off+ Remover and unfortunately was not impressed. It turned out to be worse than the Cuticle Oil that I’ve been using to remove these nails for almost 2 years. Their remover took longer than the cuticle oil and seemed to melt the nails in a way that cuticle oil does not.

I also didn’t notice my nails being additionally strong like they tout. However, the one thing it did do very well was remove all the sneaky pieces of adhesive from my nails. It just took longer than I would like and melted the nail stickers off 🙂 . So I’ll be sticking to my cuticle oil.

In other nail sticker news, I also tried Dashing Diva’s Gloss Base Seal twice and sadly, – I hated it both times 🙂 . It’s supposed to make the nails adhere even better, but it seems to do the opposite of what it claims. So that was a waste of money – oh well.

I also tried the Dashing Diva Glaze nail sticker collection for the first time. Unlike my usual nail stickers (from the Gloss collection), these Glaze stickers require a mini UV light that’s actually small enough for me to travel with. However, the Glaze nails are also more expensive ($15 to Gloss’s $8). 

I’m currently still assessing these nails and will likely write a whole post with my thoughts and tips, but my first impression is not a great one 🙂 . On my two different attempts my nails never lasted more than a few days without popping off and didn’t last an hour without catching on my hair. 

One of the main reasons I use these kinds of nails instead of polish is because of their longevity. I’ve worn the same Gloss nails for up to 5 weeks and they don’t come off and still look great. So I might be sticking to Gloss and leaving Glaze to people who prefer gel.

Lastly, I tried using a Nail Art Sculpture Pen to help push my Glaze and Gloss stickers into place and prevent bumps, but it didn’t seem to do anything. In fact, just pressing with my fingers seemed to do a better job. Oh well 🙂 . 

Learnings

I experimented with putting some of my nail stickers on “upside down” after I saw a NailTuber do it, but that doesn’t seem to work for my shape of nails. It was worse than the “right side up” application so I’ll just keep doing what I’ve been doing.

However, on the positive side I did learn a new trick. I often have trouble using a nail file on the very corner of my nail stickers to get them off in that location, but I realized that I can just pull them off and then use a nail clipper. Pulling them always leaves a little “tail,” which doesn’t look good, but for some reason it clicked that I can just clip that part off – duh 🙂 .

Emotional

My emotions this year were less all over the place than usual, which I was very happy to see. I keep track of them in my monthly retirement recaps, which also help me to give a summary at the end of the year.

In 2025 I started to miss my chosen family and created a goal to spend more time with them. And that was a goal I definitely met by snapping up an apartment less than a mile from my Partner’s parents and family, which lets me easily start my day by seeing them. 

More specifically, after beginning 2025 in Japan, I thought that like usual, my mood would even further improve with exposure to warm and sunny weather in New Zealand. And as I suspected – that was true 🙂 . I was already happy to meet my Mom for the 75th Snow Festival in Sapporo, Japan, but meeting my Partner after that was also lovely since the Southern Hemisphere was in the middle of their summer season. 

Then I had one depressive episode so small that I didn’t realize what I was feeling until it was done. And that’s my only episode for the year, which is HUGE! This is by far my smallest number on record.

During the summer and fall, after getting a homebase and seeing my loved ones daily, my mood entered the stratosphere and I was happier than I knew was possible. I was already very happy in retirement, way more than I ever was while working or earlier in my life, but it seems I’ve somehow cranked it to 11.

Learning new things, helping my family, and generally being around them a lot more has felt like a wonderful gift. I’m SO glad we grabbed this apartment even though it appeared 7 months ahead of our original schedule. 

This fall in particular, my heart felt like it was bursting sometimes with how happy I was to be around my family and see my niblings hit new milestones like losing teeth and graduating school. I often told my Partner “I’m so fucking happy it’s ridiculous!!!” just because I spent the morning chilling with my SILs, going to a pumpkin patch and staring at the Knives Out style wonder of fall in the northeast US.

It’s gorgeous, especially when it’s sunny and I’m so happy it’s a little gross 😉 , but I like that. And now, shockingly, despite the frigid temperatures this winter and lack of sunlight, I’m still ridiculously happy over here 🙂 . 

Hobbies & Skills

My hobbies continue to grow in retirement. There’s just too much that’s interesting in the world. So let’s see what I got up to in 2025.

Knitting

In 2025 I learned to knit and completed 3 scarves, 2 hats, 3 headbands, 1 pair of slippers and 1 sweater (with an additional “Knives Out” sweater being 25% complete). Here are all my completed and WIP projects on my Ravelry account in case you’re curious:

I learned a wild amount of things and am working on a post that’s currently 10,000 words about everything I learned about knitting during my first year. I’m very curious if I’ll be able to cut that down 🙂 . In summary, I’ve learned a lot of stitches and techniques, and I want to give all credit to my knitting mentors and the amazing world of KnitTube. 

I can’t even imagine how difficult it was for new knitters to learn a lot quickly before YouTube knitting tutorials. Social media has a lot of negatives, but being able to look up a super specific knitting stitch and learn it in a minute from someone across the world who posted a detailed video about it is absolutely amazing. 

Similarly, while learning this skill this year, I have also connected with a surprising number of knitters who read my blog or follow me on Insta. I guess I can add this to my random collection of hobbies that I won’t shut up about and that a people seem to appreciate. So I’ll keep it up 🙂 .

Reviews

This year I once again leaned into my childhood dream of being a reviewer of many things: films, books, food, flights – the works 🙂 . I usually post all of that stuff on my Instagram and mention it in my monthly recaps.

Blogging & Meet Ups

Obviously blogging was still one of my major hobbies in 2025. At the end of the year, I will have written 56 posts. In addition to that, I had a lot of random opportunities thrown in my lap as a result of this blog. Feel free to check out this post for all those details:

I was also able to meet more readers this year while traveling the world, which has been absolutely wonderful! It’s great to feel connected to people wherever I go after they reach out saying they want to meet me simply based on the silly words I write on the internet. That’s so wild to me 🙂 . Y’all have also given me some fantastic recommendations, which I really appreciate!

The Accountability Beast 

My #AccountabilityBeast ways continued in 2025! I’ve now been bothering people every Wednesday to do things for a few years now, and I still enjoy it as a way to check in on what y’all are up to 🙂 . I also continued to have the Patreon someone requested I set up, to show their appreciation for bothering them.

Bird Identification

My bird obsession continues 🙂 . I went from thinking of every bird as “a bird”, to recognizing some local birds by sound and being able to visually identify most types of birds by shape (even when they’re backlit)!

This year I saw and identified 120 different kinds of birds across 6 US states and 6 countries!

My curiosity with identifying birds also extends to all of nature. When going for a walk, I stop a million times to take pictures and then look up plants and flowers that I don’t recognize (it drives my partner nuts 😉 ). I collect information on all the new plants and animals I see in my monthly retirement recaps, and am constantly shocked at how many things I didn’t know about our world.

To help me identify these plants and animals, I use these free apps:

  • Merlin – My favorite for identifying birds and bird songs
  • Google Lens – My favorite for identifying pictures of flora or fauna (birds included)
  • Seek – A reader recommended I get this app to help identify plants and animals in Thailand and I’ve found it helpful everywhere because it just lists the most common things you’ll see in any area so I can keep a look out

Astrophotography

I finally saw the Northern Lights this year! And in preparing for this experience, I did way too much research that I will now share with you 🙂 . 

It might seem obvious, but to increase the chance of seeing the northern lights you need to look…North. Wild I know 😉 .

While we were in Iceland in September, it never actually became “night” – the darkest it got was “Astronomical Twilight” so it looked like the sun was only just setting at midnight because it was barely over the horizon all night. It was wild to see that while I was up at 1am looking at constellations. It was also helpful for stargazing and aurora chasing that the moon didn’t rise for 3 days of our visit. 

Every night I used the apps Hello Aurora and SpaceWeather to see what was up. They both allow you to set notifications so it can tell you if other people are posting pictures of the aurora near you (with Hello Aurora) or if the KP index is over 4 (with SpaceWeather), which indicates solar and aurora activity. 

On the night we first saw the aurora, there was only a KP of 3 and Hello Aurora said there was 97% cloud cover and a 23% chance to see the aurora – but we saw it. We also saw shooting stars at the same time, which was a magical way to experience one of my bucket list items. 

However, the next night was a solar storm with a KP index of 6 and 7. Hilariously, Hello Aurora stopped working that night after being flawless for a week – I guess the sun was too powerful to measure 🙂 . In addition to those apps, I also used this Icelandic website that locals told me is what they use to see the aurora forecast. 

I got lucky that we had a weak aurora “dress rehearsal” the night before the solar storm because I quickly realized that all of my photography tips did not work on the aurora with my Pixel 8a. 

I needed to keep my shots steady in the wind and I don’t own a tripod, so I had to get creative. I got a tupperware container and hand towels to make a DIY stand for my phone that I could place on the ground to face towards the sky and capture long exposures of up to 4 minutes. 

On my Pixel 8a, I used the Night Sight camera function and selected the longest exposure possible, which is usually called Astrophotography mode. It then takes a long exposure while counting down on your main screen so you know when it’s done. While doing that, it actually takes a photo and a video so I have videos to share with y’all in the below Reel! 

Astronomy

If it hasn’t been clear, I’ve always been obsessed with space and the stars, but never took the time to look at them before retirement. I might have noticed the moon was a little brighter than usual while on walks, but that was the extent of my astronomy prowess. One of my goals in retirement was to be more “one with the world” and learn about our night sky, and I’ve learned so much these last few years!

I now always know which way is North and as a result, can usually point out what planets and common constellations are in the sky (even though they change with the seasons 😉 ) . Then I use the free Star Walk 2 app to help me identify constellations I’m less familiar with.

I have also been intentional about stopping and watching a pretty sunrise or sunset in retirement. I have a calendar event for every full moon to make sure I take the time to find it in the night sky.  I also do my best to catch any meteor showers that have high visibility in my area, which has led me to be able to see some absolutely gorgeous shooting stars 🙂 .

I have info on all of the above things I’ve seen this year in my monthly retirement updates here in case you want more in depth info on my experiences. 

Finance

I think finance is definitely an official hobby at this point 😉 . And this year, I helped a few friends and family members (at their request) improve their financial lives! This included:

  • I had a quarterly check in with a family member who is retiring in a few years
  • I made a financial plan for a friend based on their specific situation
  • A family member I’ve helped with finances in the past shared that they’re finally debt free!
  • Several of my friends signed up for an Ally account so they can be making 3.3% on their cash
  • A friend asked me to walk them through how to negotiate a salary and benefits before they put it into practice and won everything they asked for! I was both surprised and honored to be asked since I’ve been out of the workforce for over 5 years, but I guess my bad bitch persona is wildly known 😉

That’s a fair bit of pro-bono ‘work’ if I do say so myself.

Homesteading

Or maybe “homemaking” is a more accurate title 😉 . Basically I’m trying to learn from my awesome family how to be more self-sufficient like them. I’ve talked in my monthly recaps about how I’ve started to learn about Gardening, Cheesemaking and Car Mechanics. 

For cheesemaking, I’ve made mozzerella and chèvre or more accurately bovre because it was made with fresh cow’s milk. Delicious!

In gardening I own a houseplant again so I’m learning when it needs water and sunlight. I also started learning about the difference in starters compared to seeds and what plants like to exist near each other in case I want to start an actual outside garden next year 😉 . 

And now that I own a car, I’m trying to learn how to care for it properly. I bought and changed my own air filter (saving $75) and changed my headlight bulbs after one went out. I also added air to the tires for free at a local gas station after the tire pressure light came on, and started getting monthly car washes that include an undercarriage wash to protect it from the salt on the road and hopefully prevent rusting. 

I also experienced my first car issue and learned from a mechanic that if I don’t drive my car for two weeks, I should basically disregard any weird sounds I hear until I’ve driven it for an hour. I guess cars are mysterious (and important in the US 🙂 ). 

Settling Down

Speaking of homemaking, I’ve been settling into my new homebase life a little too much 😉 . I’ve started putting up themed decorations and even found themed Halloween and Christmas cups that have added to my experience of the seasons. 

I also put up twinkle lights in our apartment, which bring me a silly amount of joy. I’ve generally decked out our apartment in an abundance of soft blankets and pillows to make it a super comfy place to chill. I’ve also been trying something new this time around with my clothing organization. 

Previously if I was going to wear a shirt again for example, I would keep it out somewhere on a chair or a couch. My Partner does that so I started following his example. 

However, I’ve been making a point to put away all my clothes into a drawer or closet for the months we’ve been in our homebase, and I like it a lot! It feels more put together and less chaotic so I think I’ll keep doing it.

Chrome Tab Organization

This is a bit silly, but it’s improved my daily life so I’m talking about it here. As background, I always have a million tabs open in my Chrome browser. However, seeing a million tabs open stresses me out 🙂 . 

So I usually have tabs in clusters and then hide all of them except for what I’m actively using. Well this year, Chrome came out with Tab Groups and it’s changed my life 🙂 . 

Instead of hiding all the windows I’m not using, I can put them in their respective groups and then collapse them. So I have everything I need open, but it doesn’t look like it – so sneaky 🙂 . I can even color-code each tab group, which is one of my favorite things to do – I color code everything I can in my life.

The only thing I don’t like about this system is that when you create a new tab group, it automatically adds it to the front of my bookmark bar, which for almost all of them, I don’t want. So I just right click to remove them from my bookmarks bar. But in general, Tab Groups have definitely taken my internet organization to the next level. 

COMMUNITY

Community has obviously been a giant part of my year from settling down to smaller ways while I was traveling. So let’s explore them all 🙂 . 

IRL

Let’s start with ‘real life’ stuff. Basically we’re currently living out our commune dreams. Years ago my Partner semi-jokingly said that he would love to live near his family on a commune. I asked if our houses could be at least a mile apart and now….that’s exactly the situation we’re in.  

It’s been so wonderful to have days filled with laughter and niblings. It warms my cold dead heart 😉 . I list all the specific fun activities we do in each month my recaps, so feel free to check those out if you missed them. But in general: I’m having a blast and this was the right choice for me 🙂 .

The Purple Community

This year a reader said to me that I “have a great community” based on a post they found helpful with comments from others that provided additional ideas. And that comment really stuck with me.

I haven’t really thought about this blog as a community, but I think that might just be an accurate description these days. It’s a small niche within the FIRE space that I try to keep kind and helpful. And I’m happy to hear that I might be succeeding 🙂 . 

Similarly, I am so excited that I was able to meet readers of this blog across the world this year in New Zealand, Japan, Seattle, The UK,  (London/Bath) and Colorado. It always makes my jaw drop when people around the globe reach out to grab a coffee with me and I appreciate it so much. 

The Reading Community

I mentioned in a previous post that after reading hetero romance my entire life, I am now reading almost all queer romance in my non-fiction category. This is for a lot of reasons, but the main one is that reading my first queer romance a few years ago made me realize that most hetero romances these days don’t give men any personality whatsoever and that SUCKS. (Side note: Being hot is not a personality trait 😉 ). 

So that makes it impossible for me to go back to books like that. BOTH characters need to be pretty realistic people for a book to not bore me and quickly join my growing DNF pile. Anyway, you’ll see that fact reflected in the wild amount of books I DNFed this year, but before I get ahead of myself, let’s see what else was happening in the reading community 🙂 . 

The other big thing that happened was that several queer authors I follow were kicked off Meta’s platforms, such as Instagram and Facebook. As a result of being deleted from these platforms for no reason (they didn’t violate any guidelines), these authors have given even more focus to their newsletters, which I’m subscribed to. Joining newsletters was a new thing I started to do last year and wish I had done sooner. Several authors have also created their own platforms. 

In addition to those new platforms, a lot of these authors have set up free Patreon pages that people can join for updates. And I’ve joined them all 🙂 . I really love that my wild amount of reading in retirement has helped me find these indie authors that allow me to be on their ARC reading teams, provide feedback on upcoming releases and even writing via Patreon. This also just generally feels like a community of people trying to lift each other up, which I absolutely love. 

The Livestream Community

This year I’ve gotten even more into the livestream community. This is mostly as a result of my love of film, horror and the YouTube channel Dead Meat. They streamed a game I now love, The Quarry, on YouTube.

They also have weekly livestreams where they play new horror games, which has helped me discover some gems. In addition, they often do even more streams on their Patreon. I’ve never been tempted to play horror games before, but as you’ll see below – they got me and I’ve been having a blast 🙂 . 

In addition, Dead Meat does a Weekly Monday Morning Livestream that I almost always attend and comment on if I can provide helpful information. It’s been very engaging and fun to be a part of these live events. 

The Patreon Community

Last, but not least I have joined several additional Patreons this year, as I alluded to above 🙂 . I had a few in the past that I contributed, but this year I greatly increased that number and I’m so glad I did 🙂 .

I love knowing that in the face of for example YouTube making it increasingly difficult for creators to be paid for their hard work, I can just give them money more directly. So that’s what I’ve been doing 🙂 . This includes YouTubers, authors and artists in general that I love and want to give financial support. 

TRAVEL

This year I lived in 33 cities, 6 US states and 6 other countries. Specifically:

USA

  1. New York
  2. California
  3. Washington
  4. Colorado
  5. Massachusetts
  6. New Hampshire
Source

International

  1. Japan🇯🇵
  2. New Zealand🇳🇿
  3. Perú🇵🇪
  4. England🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿
  5. Scotland🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿
  6. Iceland🇮🇸
Source

I also had the below new travel experiences. I’ve included links to my Insta reviews of them:

And here are the full posts I wrote about some of the above experiences:

This year’s travel adventures included 17 planes, 7 trains and 2 rental cars as well as innumerable taxis and rideshares. The map of my travels looks even more chaotic than usual 😉 . I’m excited to see where my adventures take me next year.

Source

WATCHED

I absolutely love films. In fact, I wanted to be a film major, but that wasn’t ‘liberal arts’ enough for my college, so I ended up just taking all of the classes I could on the subject and declaring another major. As a result of this obsession, I suspected that I would be watching films constantly in retirement, but that didn’t turn out to be the case.

In fact, most of the films I saw this year only happened because I was watching them with others, such my Weekly Movie Club that myself and 2 friends have been doing for 5 years now. So this list is way shorter than I expected, given that I have unlimited time – maybe I need to focus more on watching TV and movies next year 😉 . If you’re interested in following along with what I’m watching and how I rate these films, feel free to check out my Letterboxd profile here.

Movies

This year I watched 115 movies. Here is a list of all the movies I saw this year and below are my top films of 2025:

  1. Sinners
  2. The Substance
  3. Heretic
  4. Next Goal Wins
  5. The Wild Robot
  6. The Blackening
  7. KPop Demon Hunters
  8. Predator: Killer Of Killers
  9. Blink Twice
  10. Juror #2
  11. Twisters

And here are my honorable mentions for 2025:

  1. Conclave
  2. Longlegs
  3. The Gangster, the Cop, the Devil
  4. Speak No Evil (2024)
  5. Flow
  6. Predator: Badlands
  7. Transformers One
  8. G20
  9. Sonic the Hedgehog
  10. Sonic The Hedgehog 2
  11. Sonic The Hedgehog 3

TV Shows

Below is a list of my favorite new TV shows I watched this year:

And here are all the other shows I watched and re-watched this year:

YouTube

A few years ago, I started getting really into YouTube. Below is a list of my channel obsessions this year. I also thought it would be fun to include my favorite videos from 2025 in no particular order 🙂 . Enjoy!

And here are my favorite YouTube channels in 2025 by category:

Education

Anti-MLM/Scams

Film

Books

Comedy

Knitting

READING

In 2025 I finished a total of 17 fiction books, 168 non-fiction books and approximately 1 million fanfics for a total of 185 published books in 2025! I also unfortunately DNFed 69 books, some of those at 75% read. 

In the last year, I’ve started DNFing books instead of forcing myself to finish them even if I’m not enjoying them. As a result of that and focusing time on other projects (knitting and family time 😉 ), my amount of books read has dropped from last year’s 220 read. And I’m fine with all of that 🙂 .

Since I’ve finally seemed to conquer my tendency to never read when I working and too tired to do so, I’m just going to continue reading when I want to in retirement, DNF when I’m not feeling it, and see what happens as a result 🙂 . Similar to the last few years, my renewed Kindle Unlimited subscription, Libby app and now Hoopla account are how I read this much without breaking the bank by buying books I’ll never re-read again.

However, now that I have a homebase, I have been spending a fair bit buying up physical copies of books that I seem to re-read annually. This might be silly if we decide we want to become nomads again next year, but I think I’ll be able to find someone that loves those books too in the meantime if that happens. 

Just a side note: I still use Goodreads to keep track of my books, but the issues that have emerged since the dreaded Amazon bought Goodreads has continued to grow and grow. Simply, Goodreads no longer correctly logs my numbers of books read. 

If I go to the end of a book and say “don’t log this” – they log it. As a result, the numbers of books in my account between “My Stats”, “my 2025” and “my 2025 Reading Challenge” are all different, which is awful and also kind of hilarious because it’s the only reason I was staying with Goodreads outside of the fact that they let me easily find my trusted book reviewers. 

If they can’t even keep track of my books accurately, they’re pretty useless 🙂 . So that’s great since I was looking for an out, but I’m still having trouble with things like Storygraph having an not great UI and also no way to find my trusted book reviewers without their personal email. 

In essence, Goodreads is going downhill at a wild trajectory and I’m looking for another solution. Feel free to let me know in the comment what your favorite platform is to log book ratings and read book reviews.

And here are my favorite books that I read this year in no particular order:

Non-Fiction

  1. Not The End Of The World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet by Hannah Ritchie
  2. In this Economy?: How Money & Markets Really Work by Kyla Scanlon 
  3. Abundance by Ezra Klein
  4. The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein
  5. The Simple Path To Wealth (2025) by JL Collins
  6. Men Who Hate Women: From Incels to Pickup Artists – The Truth about Extreme Misogyny and How it Affects Us All by Laura Bates
  7. Money for Change: How to Reduce Waste, Build Wealth, and Create a Better Future for All by Kara Perez
  8. The Myth Of Making It: A Workplace Reckoning by Samhita Mukhopadhyay
  9. Little Bosses Everywhere: How the Pyramid Scheme Shaped America by Bridget Read 
  10. The Sirens’ Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource by Chris Hayes
  11. A Dumb Birds Field Guide To The Worst Birds Ever by Matt Kracht
  12. Backyard Bird Chronicles by Amy Tan
  13. Slow Productivity by Cal Newport

Fiction

  1. Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
  2. When The Tides Held The Moon by Venessa Vida Kelley
  3. Free From Falling by E.L. Massey
  4. Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe
  5. The Trade Deadline by A.L. Heard
  6. Flip by Ngozi Ukazu
  7. 10 Ways To Accidentally Fall In Love by Emmy Sanders
  8. I’m Your Guy by Sarina Bowen
  9. Poetry On Ice by Jesse H. Reign 
  10. Top Shelf by E.M. Lindsey
  11. Winning You by E.M. Lindsey
  12. Mighty The Fallen by Dianna Roman
  13. Himbo by Emmy Sanders
  14. How To Save Your Human Invader by Arden Fox
  15. Devoted by Lark Taylor
  16. On The Mountain by Riley Hart
  17. Roleplay at Randy’s by Rikki Leighton
  18. Little Demon in the Details by Nordika Night
  19. Gym Bros by August Jones
  20. The Frathole by Devon McCormack
  21. Pretty Boy by Brianna Flores
  22. Peep by Rianne Elizabeth

PLAYED

2025 was once again going to be my year of video games, but as you can see from the title of this post, I failed 🙂 . However, I did play new video games this year along with my old favorites, so I did expand my experiences but hopefully I can do even more next year. I never thought “play more video games” would be on my to do list, but retirement is weird 😉 .

New-To-Me Games

Old Faithful

I have a post coming out in the new year about my favorite games that I played in 2025, so look out for that if it’s of interest to you.

Twitch

This is new for me in the last few years 🙂 . As an extension of playing more games, I started watching YouTube videos about those games. But the next step that I didn’t anticipate was that I realized those same gaming YouTubers often go live on Twitch to play those same games and interact with their fans in real time.

So I started joining Twitch streams and was quickly hooked. It’s a lot of fun to talk directly to these content creators and feel like a little community of fans cheering them on. In previous years, I got that feeling from Discord and Fan Twitter, but it’s cool to find a new way since I deleted Twitter off my phone years ago and am rarely on Discord.

Here are some Twitch streamers I enjoyed this year:

LISTENED

As I discuss in the below post, I used to listen to hours of Spotify’s personalized playlists a week, but they started stuffing those with AI music that they claim is from “verified artists” so for that reason and a few others, I abandoned Spotify. I’m now a happy paying customer of TIDAL music, which actually provides even more data than Spotify did 🙂 . 

In 2025 listened to over 34,249 minutes of music, which was in line with previous years (I listened to 29K minutes in 2019, 71K in 2020 aka the year I retired, 84K in 2021, 66K in 2022, 85K in 2023, 60K in 2024). I listened to 2,049 artists and I found new albums that made my heart sing.

Here’s the best music I found this year:

Soundtracks & Scores

I love film soundtracks and original scores, so here are the soundtracks and scores that I couldn’t get out of my head.

Soundtracks

Original Scores

Artists

Here are the new artists I’ve become obsessed with this year:

Songs

These are my favorite songs that I listened to in 2025:

Conclusion

And that’s what I got up to in 2025! I expected this post to be short because I didn’t feel like I did a lot until I wrote it all out, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Next year I’m curious to see how my life might further evolve as a result of having a homebase. 

So far I’ve absolutely loved having our own space while also being within walking and “pop over” distance from family. Let’s see if that changes 😉 . 

In addition, I also already have trips on the books for almost every month next year, and all but 2 are domestic ones. I still absolutely love traveling and exploring new places, but I’m also interested in trying to remember what having a home in one place looks like. I’ll keep y’all posted when I figure it out 😉 . Until next time!  

11 thoughts on “The Year Of Settling Down(ish): 2025 Goals & Accomplishments”

  1. Interesting that your trips next year are mostly domestic – I thought you had said that domestic travel was losing its magic since it feels close to home without being home. What made you want to do fewer internetional trips next year?

    I love hearing about how happy your homebase makes you! I know you felt fulfilled by your virtual community and I always marveled at that because I definitely need physical proximity to friends and family to ground me, even though I also keep up with my loved ones who are distant. Glad you have both now!

    Reply

    1. I said LONGTERM domestic travel😉. The trip where I discovered that was a 6 week one in Colorado. None of my 2026 trips are long – I think the longest one is a week or two, which I think will be fine, but we’ll see.

      Interestingly it looks like I usually only leave the country twice in any year – I just stay abroad 🙂 . So it’s the same number of “leaving the country” trips, but since I’m trying to actually be in our homebase next year I’m not staying abroad as long.

      And yeah I’ve always been happy with mostly virtual interaction (in addition to my Partner living with me lol), but it is nice to have both now 🙂 .

      Reply

  2. I always look forward to this annual post of yours! For a few reasons – firstly, I’m a big “reflecter” as well, I love reviewing my year as a whole and seeing what themes come up.

    Secondly – you always introduce me to new music I’ve never heard of! I’m a voracious music lover & listener so when someone can introduce me to new & good music, I’m listening! Maybe you could start including a top movie, book, and song of each month of each quarter?

    Have a great 2026, purple!

    Reply

    1. I’m so glad you look forward to it and yeah I love doing that too – obviously 😉 . And I’m so happy to hear that I introduce you to new music you enjoy!!!

      Good idea! I do share my top 3 books I read each month and the list of movies I watched in my month recaps, but a top song and top movie each month or quarter is interesting. Thank you!

      Reply

  3. I love your astrophotography! Those aurora pictures are breathtaking. That’s something I want to try.

    I appreciate that these recaps aren’t all about travel and finances, but that you also discuss all the time you put into self-improvement and picking up new knowledge and new skills. Travel is fun, for sure, but keeping your brain active and learning new things is even more important for a good retirement and a good life.

    Since you have Apple TV, I’d recommend one of my new favorite shows, Murderbot. It’s based on a book series by Martha Wells (which is also really good) about a killer security cyborg that hates its job and just wants to watch bad TV.

    Reply

    1. Yeah you should totally give it a try! It was a lot of fun once I figured out how it worked for my phone.

      And I’m glad you appreciate that 🙂 . I’m always trying to learn and improve in all aspects of my life so I like to keep a record of all that.

      I loved most of the Murderbot books, but I watched the first episode of the TV show and really didn’t like it for some reason. Thank you for the reco though – maybe I’ll give it another try.

      Reply

  4. Favorite book platform: BookNotification.com! Hands down. They are awesome. Great business model & mission, quickly growing, and super-responsive to feedback.

    Reply

  5. Awesome to hear about your fulfilling year with so many interests! Do you tend to group certain hobbies by week/season or is it more day by day go with the flow?

    Also I’m so late but just watched KPop Demon Hunters for the first time with my nieces. One of them has already watched it 9 times!! LOL

    Reply

    1. Thank you! I go with the flow and what I feel like doing day to day, which can vary wildly 🙂 . Some days I’m hanging out with multiple people and am out all day, some days I read an entire book comfy in bed and other days I knit an entire sweater sleeve. I’m all over the place lol. However, from there I can usually find a main focus I had month to month based on how many books I read, how many things I knitted etc.

      And lol I’m happy you discovered the joy of that film. My niblings are so obsessed I’ve lost count of how many times they’ve watched it. Though I have no room to talk – I’m often belting out the lyrics while driving alone 🙂 .

      Reply

      1. Ahahahaha it really is a great movie!

        And makes sense about how you occupy your time. Figuring out my own patterns. Have so many interests but can’t do them all at once!

        Reply

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