A List of Goals for 2025

I tried to get the perfect shot with the Stroopwafel in the coffee mug—it's behind the cassette tapes—but it was already making it's way into the chai tea when I found the perfect shot. Either way, it was delicious! —Taken with an 1Phone 13

I made a list of goals for myself last year in the hopes that I can keep myself sane as the United States continues to fall apart—in a way akin to Dave Winer's Scripting News tagline, "It's even worse than it appears."

Here's what I'm planning...

• Buy (and possibly fix) a cassette player so I can finally enjoy listening to the tapes I bought as featured in the above picture.
• Teaching myself how to speak Dutch.
• Migrate this blog over to a new platform.

The first goal was the one that spurred this idea after the results of last year's election when I put a question to the Fediverse as to how I could find one. The conversations threads and answers were very insightful and I have a good idea as to how I ideally want to go about the search—with the possible repair. (...and yes, the leftmost tapes in the photo are arranged incorrectly.)

Learning Dutch was something I've been considering for awhile. In fact, that book pictured above was one of the books I bought with Barnes & Noble birthday money last year alongside three others. I thought it was about time to pick up another language alongside Latin American Spanish  to keep my mid-thirties brain active. Not to mention that the Netherlands is one of the countries I'd like to visit in my lifetime—the United Kingdom, Canada (British Columbia), and Poland are also on that list as well.   

The last thing on the list is a change that I think will do myself and this blog some good in a continually enshittified web. After over ten years of sporadic writing, it's time to move on up and change platforms. I've been primary eying a service called Micro.blog, which describes itself as a blogging platform combined with the feel of a modern social network. What drew me into considering Micro.blog was the fact that they're interop-friendly by being pro-IndieWeb* and allowing for cross-posting to the Fediverse (alongside Bluesky and others).

In case I can't migrate over to Micro.blog, there's also WordPress—where I have a separate blog serving as my undergraduate writing portfolio. I can't see that possibility being much of an issue though. The biggest thing for me would be the process of updating the Scrivner files to note which photos were included in previous posts along with the order they were in and their associated captions. 

This will probably be the first of the goals, and one of the most important things I'd like to do this year. I'll set a early-July deadline at the latest, but I might get it done much sooner. 

The transition's going to be a bumpy ride—I still need to finish de-Twittering the blog—but I think the end-result will be for the better.      

...and maybe 2025 won't be as bad on a personal level. 

But until then: Keep resisting, stay safe, and take care of each other!   

*More on the IndieWeb from the official site.