Building my life in 2025

This year's review and planning cycle for 2024/2025 was a nice and chill experience. I reflected on how this process has changed over the years, and I really feel like I've developed something that works for me and is something I look forward to doing over the holiday season.

2024 Review - Movement
This was a good year for lots of forward movement in different areas of my life! I split my goals into major and minor areas. Let's start with the major ones:

1. Carnarvon Great Walk with my brother
This was such a fun and loving trip to do together. Training went pretty well for the first few months of the year, and we ramped it up a couple of months out from the trip. The week we spent together hiking in Carnarvon National Park was awesome. You can read more about the trip in my blog post from June 2024. 

2. Get a new job in my intended industry
I feel this goal was a success, but not in the way I initially imagined it. Typical, right! My initial goal was to move into an industry where I could contribute to solving the challenges presented by climate change. 
Where I ended up was in the same role at the same organisation, but now having the knowledge and access to learning so I can make my current job a climate job. Future blog post about this idea! I'm really happy about this because I love my career as a product manager, and I'm excited to continue on the journey to use my current skills to benefit our environment. 

3. Prepare for moving house
This was not as fun as I imagined, but still successful. My husband and I didn't do a lot of hanging out to dream and plan, but we discussed throughout the year and through a process of elimination came up with more solid ideas about what we're looking for in our new home. We got as far as putting an offer in on a house but it didn't work out. We learned a lot in that process too though, so we'll use those learnings for continuing the search this year. 

Smaller goals:

• Empty my mending basket: the basket is not empty! But I'm so pleased I mended 52 items throughout the year, including 12 for loved ones. Plus however many items I mended for people through repair cafes. A regular mending habit is now established, which is a success, so we'll see how we go throughout this year. 
• Monthly blog posts: I doubled posts from 2023, from 3 to 6. Trying again this year for monthly, applying the same upfront planning while I have the time and focus. I've found a weekly time to dedicate to the blog as well, which should help me keep at it each month. 
• 26 Instagram posts for my YellowBerryStitching page: this was a pretty fun goal, which I did 50% of. Mostly sewing posts with a few others like cross stitch, mending, and crochet. 
• Complete refining my Etsy listings: total write-off, didn't do any work on this one. Research and practice as an approach obviously didn't work, so I'm trying something else this year. I need to find a weekly time to spend on this like the blog so I keep focus on it. 
• Find a project approach that works for me: this goal went pretty well, I'll call it partial success. For craft projects, including sewing, I'm now batching preparation so I can just grab what I want to work on and get going. It's nice to have a range of projects ready to go, and I need to finish them before preparing the next batch. For projects like my Etsy store and this blog, finding a regular weekly time to dedicate to these has been helpful so far. I need to couple this with knowing what step I'm working on each week so I don't get bogged down in analysis or not knowing what to do next. 

2025 Word of the Year - Build
This year I'm building on the movement and successes that I had in 2024. Everything I want to focus on is really just building the life I want to live, and I know I'm heading in the right direction. 
I don't have a lot of specific goals for this year, more focus areas in that right direction that I want to make stronger.

2025 focus areas

• Do more for caring for the environment

This is a super open-ended focus area that I want to bend most of my life towards, if not all of it. I'm going to do this by writing myself a 'climate work menu', which is a big list of all the things I can do, both in my personal and professional lives, so 'doing more' just becomes how I approach prioritising and decision making. 

• Cat training routine

A bit left field, looking back over the last few years of goals! I feel like I'm not spending enough time and attention on our 2 beautiful kitties, and they're currently a bit bored and grumpy.  I've drawn up a couple of training sheets so I can mark what we're working on together and what items they've finished learning. Sit and spin are 2 items that they've both picked up easily! 

• Continuing my projects

Smaller focus areas like blog posts, my Etsy store, mending. If I can find how to build these things into the climate work menu approach, that'll only strengthen my focus and resolve to work on these items. 

I'm looking forward to getting into 2025, and making my life even more of what I want it to be.