2025 in Review

It's time for an end-of-the-year 2025 retrospective blog post! Truthfully, I debated on whether or not I should write such a basic, obvious blog post to round out the year, but I ultimately decided I would. Even if it's a bit selfish or boring to read for others, 2025 has been one of the most important, productive, and fun years of my life (if it feels like I say that about every year, then I think that's a good sign). I accomplished so much this year, whether it was social, academic, or professional, that I think I'll allow myself to pat myself on the back and celebrate myself as a 21st birthday present to myself. But before I spend the rest of this blog congratulating myself, I think it's important to recognize some shortcomings from the goals I set for myself this year.

    At the start of the year (or rather at the end of the last year), I posted a blog that was meant to look forward to 2025 as a year of new growth, new challenges, and self-improvement. As a result, I set a few new year's resolution goals for myself to guide this growth. Unfortunately, I didn't really adhere to them... like at all. Most notably, my goals for physical health and fitness were essentially ignored completely. Even worse than not going to the gym more than a handful of times throughout the year, I actually dipped into some pretty unhealthy periods of time throughout the year, due to stress-eating and busy schedules. Not only was I not improving myself, I was actively worsening the state of my body. I'm not proud or happy about this at all, but I feel like it's important to acknowledge when you fail at something. This isn't the end of the world, but rather the valley before climbing the mountain. Sometimes you need to fall in order to climb higher than ever before, and that's what I intend on changing in the new year. Along with a few friends of mine who all similarly struggled with fitness issues, we all set goal weights to reach by the end of the year. For me, my goal weight is to lose 30 pounds by the end of the year (so roughly lose 5 pounds per month). Whether or not I reach this goal is yet to be known, but by setting a clear goal, I can measure how well or poorly I was able to meet this target.

    The other goals I had set for myself in 2025 were... kind of done? But also kind of not done. For example, one of my big goals for the year was to write four scripts, one for each break/vacation I got from my time at college. And technically...? I did write four scripts... but they weren't spaced out in the way I thought they would be. Pretty much the first half of 2025 (from mid-December to early May) was dedicated to writing Weed Demon, a short film project that was meant to be a collaboration with Wade, where I would write a script and he would shoot it. The production plans never ended up manifesting too well, since he got busy with film school projects, but I was really proud of the writing process and how it turned out with the characters and commentary. Sounds good, right? But here's the issue: the other three scripts that I wrote in 2025 were all much shorter, written closer together, and with less time dedicated to each one. I still spent like a month on each project, but it was nowhere near the amount of time that I did for Weed Demon. Having said that, however, I feel like on a technical level these last three scripts have been some of my best work, blowing Weed Demon out of the water in terms of how well its written. So I did technically achieve my goal of producing 4 scripts by the end of the year, but they just weren't spaced out the way I originally planned. I'm still very happy with the results of this goal, even if they were unintentional, so I'll call this one a win!

    The final goal I had set for myself in 2025 was to travel more! I think I said I wanted to go on a little trip to somewhere once every three months, for a total of four trips in 2025. And this was... sort of met? Kind of??? I did two big trips in 2025: one with my friends to Blueridge, Georgia, and another trip to Buenos Aires, Argentina with my family. One at the start of the year, and one at the end of the year. But what about the other two trips? Well, I did visit my buddies in Gainesville twice, spending the whole weekend their each time, and I also went to Tampa for Gasparilla (although this was only a day trip). So if I count each Gainesville trip, I would have met my goal, but counting the same place twice sort of felt like cheating. So I'll say this goal remains incomplete. Not quite a fail, but not quite a total success either. I'm still happy enough with my travels this year though!

    So, now that I got last year's baggage out of the way, I can spend the rest of this post talking about all the great stuff I definitely accomplished and enjoyed this year!

    For starters, it would be a little silly to write a blog on this year's accomplishments without mentioning the blog itself. I initially started this project in April 2024, setting myself the goal of posting twice a week for a full year, concluding in April 2025. You can read more about how I feel about the success of this challenge in the blog post linked here, but I also wanted to bring attention to the fact that I didn't just close the book on this success. After the conclusion of my one-year limit, I made the conscious decision to keep going, even if at a reduced pace, and keep challenging myself beyond the goals I initially set for myself. That's... incredible, in my opinion. Maybe it's not as noteworthy for others, but I am seriously proud of myself for choosing to continue working on my writing and myself even though I have the option to say I did what I set out to do and that's it. This blog isn't just a feat of consistent writing for me, it's proof of a change of mindset between now and when I started. I don't know how long I'll be able to keep up monthly blog posts (granted, some of these posts are written/posted retroactively), but for as long as I enjoy doing it, I will keep writing and posting on this blog.

    While I'm on the topic of writing, I wanted to touch on the entire process of applying to FSUFilm's MFA Writing program. Don't worry, I'm not going to reiterate three blogs' worth of yapping about my writing process and dedication to investing in my future, but I do want to acknowledge that... I did it. Starting conceptually from the beginning of 2025, I poured my everything into this application process. Beyond creative pressure, I pushed myself to go out and meet with FSUFilm faculty, I volunteered hours and hours of my time working as a production assistant on MFA sets in the searing hot summer, and I networked and got to know film students like a madman. A question I ask myself often whenever I have a goal is "How bad do you want to achieve this? What are you willing to do to achieve your goal?". The answer, in short, wasn't "anything". It was "everything".

    I'm also very proud of my work at the Kudzu Review! It's kind of crazy how I started out as a fresh recruit in the Fiction Section in Fall 2024, and I just finished the Fall 2025 semester working as the Head of the Fiction Section. This doesn't just represent professional development or leadership skills for me (though obviously, yes it does), but more importantly, it showed me what I can do when I fully apply myself in an environment that suits me. Kudzu has been instrumental in building my confidence as a writer, editor, and team member, while also enriching my personal and social life. I've made some very close connections with friends who I would've never met outside of my time at Kudzu, and I am so, so grateful that I decided to make that blind leap into joining this organization over a year ago.

    There's a lot more I can reflect on, but for my final paragraph of appreciation, I wanted to remember how important and influential my housing situation was on my personal life. Throughout the entirety of my sophomore year of college, I lived in a shithole. There isn't really a way to sugarcoat that description, to be perfectly honest. Beyond having to deal with a disgusting, garbage-filled apartment when we moved in, the near-thousand roaches that Wade and I killed during our time there (not kidding, we kept count), and the frequent power and water outages, we also had to deal with the worst third roommate of all time. For an entire year, we had to deal with a drug-addicted, noise-blasting, and violent roommate: Aldo. I don't have any issue using his name now that I'm no longer living in that unsafe situation. But basically, as a result of living with this creature, neither Wade nor I were able to live comfortably that year. If it wasn't genuinely fearing for our safety after repeated violent threats, it was cringing from the uninhabitable filth of the apartment, or dealing with endless nights with no sleep from how obnoxiously loud he was at night. Suffice to say, we were in hell.

    However, the thing about reaching rock bottom is that you can only go up from there. And up we went, as soon as we moved into an apartment of our own, with just Wade and I living in peace. Depending on your own personal experience with bad living situations, you will be able to relate to the overwhelming sensation of peace and happiness when we had our own quiet little sanctuary of an apartment, where we kept it clean, kept it quiet, and finally felt safe for the first time in a year. I don't know if you can call it an "accomplishment," but to us, being able to live in peace felt like finally reaching the top of a treacherous mountain we had been climbing for a year. I think my next blog in January will talk about this more, so I'll leave it there for now.

    So... What next? Do I have any goals for 2026? Any New Year's resolutions? Kind of. In 2026, I don't want to structure my life around meeting certain goals and stressing about failing or succeeding on arbitrary challenges I set for myself. Instead, 2026 will be centered around continuation. Consistency is key, so I will be committing myself to maintaining the routines I've set for myself, whether they be journaling or working out, to ensure that no matter how little progress is made, I am taking a step forward every day. 2025 was the best year of my life yet, but I'm confident that 2026 will dethrone it.

Happy New Year!