Measuring up my 2025

When I sat down in the quiet and reminisced about how 2025 went, I realised that this is a year of incredible wingspan. It encompassed so many bittersweet endings and new beginnings, my newly-fledged life of stepping into my stride in the last year of my college full of travels and experiences that made us young, and my even newer life of being a working adult who lived with consequences and constraints. What a year. I’m glad I had celebrated all of its milestones and never stopped making new memories.

It’s hard to reconcile who I was throughout the year of great change that, as I am looking back on my personal goals, I realised I had not even really thought about conscientiously growing in the ways I had set out for myself. I had set out 4 goals for my 2025, and here’s a quick review of how well I have done for them.

1. Translate ONE third language song (Hebrew or Japanese) every week. I have definitely stopped doing that for the lack of time, but I now can sing a decent handful of foreign language songs, and I am proud to have maintained my touchpoints with my new languages by writing book reviews and watching shows.
2. Ask people for help, before I actually need it. I have surprisingly gotten so much better at this that I was a little surprised to find this goal. People around me have made it easy to ask for help, and I am glad to have been shaped into a person who doesn’t have to second guess that.
3. Start making fashion and outfit blog posts, again. I don’t think I have posted much on my blog, also by nature of the lack of opportunities to dress well outside of uniform, but I think I have fully embraced who I am in how I dress, and have found a happy balance with expressing it online.
4. Come up with a system to write better birthday messages for everyone I have ever cared about. This is the one task that I have failed miserably. Now that I am reconnected with my Singapore friends but became more distanced from my American friends, it is even more necessary that I work on this and be a friend who shows up.

Looking ahead at the next full year of proper working-adulthood, let me be no frills about some of the goals that I hope will ensure that I don’t lose the sparkle that I have just picked up this year.

1. Physically journal once a week. I had opened and read a reflection book from my early training days and I am equally embarrassed by who I find staring back at me and impressed by the power of documenting my own growth honestly. I want to go back to that habit — both of frequent reflections, and of physically writing — that can be evidence of how my 2026 went.
2. Start an interior design mood board. It’s time to start researching and visualising towards the goal of buying my own house eventually! I am excited to step into the fun parts of adulthood too.
3. Forge meaningful rituals with my friendships. After the last few months of playing catchup with everyone’s lives, I want to make sure to establish meaningful rituals with all my friends, long distance or not, so that I don’t just play a game of catch-up every so often that we meet for a meal.
4. Stay consistent with kendo, and find a way back to dance. These are things that made me happy, and have given me invaluable communities. I hope they will continue to light up my life no matter how busy it gets.

I am a little daunted whether I have time and energy to give despite not knowing my work commitments the next year, but I do hope that this small feeling of magic that possessed me on the cusp of New Year’s will see me through.