I Didn’t Do Anything Exciting This Year (2025 Reflection)

I’m someone who takes goals and vision boards very seriously and the time between Christmas and New Year’s Eve is my Super Bowl for this.

But before I dive into the number of pounds I want to lose and the amount of debt I want to pay off, I like to do a reflection of the past year so I know how far I’ve come and what actually happened the last 365 days instead of what’s living in my mind at this very moment.

I’ll be honest with you. I sat down to do this reflection thinking “I didn’t do anything exciting this year. There won’t be much to reflect on.” I started to feel a little down about that.

Last year, Austin and I got engaged and next year we’ll be getting married. These are obviously HUGE milestones, but this year felt like…the year in between.

The year that’ll get washed away in memories when we’re eighty thinking about our early thirties.

I started with a list of things that happened – good or bad. A nice, neat bullet point list with events that we attended, places we traveled to, and new things we tried.

But then I found myself reminiscing on those events.

“Alanna, Laurel, and I went to Alanna’s family cabin to read Onyx Storm when it first came out. This was SO FUN and I’m craving this type of connection with them again. Us three girls doing what we love the most for a long weekend.”

“I flew back for Haley’s wedding shower and bachelorette party and then we got to see her and Mike get MARRIED! Their wedding was a blast and getting to see one of my best friends walk down the aisle was one of the biggest joys of the year.”

“Austin’s family came to visit us and I’ll never forget our oyster and martini night. We (his parents) spent like $700 on so many rounds of oysters and martinis and we had the best time ever.”

My pages are filled with things like this. I may not have ran a marathon, given birth, or lost 100lbs, but I saw my parents way more than I usually do and I got closer to my local Washington friends this year.

Austin and I had one of the best meals of our lives at Le Crocodile in Vancouver.

We got to travel all over Washington because I had the opportunity to work with a couple of tourism boards.

We hosted our first ever dinner party and even though we were both feeling some anxiety about it, it ended up being really fun and we loved being able to bring people together.

Austin and I even went to Scotland, Zurich, and Paris together at the beginning of the year and this is SUCH a privilaged thing to even type, but that starts to not feel like a monumental thing anymore after you’ve been traveling for years. This year, we traveled so much less than we usually do because we’re saving for the wedding, so my brain is telling me we’re missing out instead of focusing on how much fun that trip was.

And it was! We got to do our engagement photoshoot in Scotland and then explore Paris together without a plan in place. The trip, itself, was kind of monumental because it was my first time going to Europe for work.

Overall, this year feels like the year of relationships to me. I have a few real friendships in Washington now. I got to travel to see my fellow book girlies and my hometown friends. I got to see my family more than I have in years past and I was so thankful that Austins family flew out to see us.

I kept going back to thinking “nothing exciting happened this year,” but this is something I’ve been craving: deeper relationships and showing up for people I love. I find I realize other things don’t matter quite as much when I do that. I don’t cope eat as much. I don’t overthink as much.

The exciting stuff is fun. But when you’re traveling every month and constantly on the go, it can be exhausting and isolating.

I think it’s a core value of mine that relationships are the most important thing to me, so when I’m looking at my un-exciting year, it feels really wholesome and grounding.

My 2026 goals will proabably still include things like finances and health, but I think we all need to make sure not to let the softer wins go uncelebrated or under appreciated.