My 2024 review post gave me a chance to look back over the past year. Now I'm looking forward, to make some goals for 2025. If you read my 2024 review these won't be too surprising, but it's good to see exactly what I'm aiming towards.

Choir

I've tried many different ways to be a choir singer (committee, marketing, judging etc). This year, I'm focusing on the ones that work for me. I'm a singer and (assistant) music director primarily. My choir goal for 2025 is to slow down and get back to my roots by getting better at simply singing and conducting/coaching. No tangents allowed.

Career

My goal for work is to become more consistent. People seem generally pleased with my work, but I want to reach a level that I'm happy with for myself. Personal branding is still a priority to me, so I'll be submitting talk proposals to Laracon AU again, and (spoiler alert for the end of this series) I'll be continuing to publish this blog, albeit far less frequently.

Creativity

I'm setting a modest goal for Choir Concierge this year - I want to make regular contributions to it, focusing mainly on stability and quality-of-life improvements. I have a backlog of request that I'd like to get to.

I'd also like to continue my new hobby of designing my own board games. My goal is to develop the Warrior Cats themed game further (until we complete it, get sick of it, or decide that it won't work), and also start designing one other concept for a board game (I'm still looking for ideas).

Home

Our house is starting to feel comfortable and complete in a lot of areas. One area that still needs work is our garden. We need to expand our space for growing herbs and veggies, plus we desperately need to finish the mess that is our patio.

I want to finish reading the Warriors series, so that I can read the newest book in parallel with Victoria when it comes out. I've also been holding off on reading other new books until I've caught up. I want to increase my reading time even further, and this blog has been getting in the way of that (I typically publish at night, when I'd normally be reading).

My goal for gender transition this year is simple - more of the same. This may change but for now, I want to avoid overloading myself. Transition is already stressful, no need to make it worse. So - I'm aiming to book in some more hair removal sessions, and (gradually) continue updating my wardrobe.

Relationships

I neglected to include this category in my 2024 review article but it's one of the most important, so I'd like to set some goals. Since moving to Perth, I've been able to return to the Gold Coast regularly to visit my family. It's still a goal to visit them a minimum of once per year, but I want to get better at scheduling phone time.

Victoria's family is important to me as well. We already see one half of the family here in WA very regularly, but it's been a goal for a while to visit the other half of her family in her birth country, Chile. We've been saving towards that goal, but in 2025 I'd love to increase these contributions so we can get there sooner.

There's room for more relationship-related goals, but that's all I have for now. Things more specifically related to my relationship with Victoria will obviously require a conversation (and not everything makes it into a blog post), and maybe I should also write a goal related to friendships. Stuff to think about!

Anti-goals

That was a rather large list of goals. I think it's unavoidable - I simply have lots of hobbies and ambitions! Having said that, there are several things that I've purposely left off this list in an attempt to streamline my life, just a little:

• I'm drastically stripping back my ambitions within the barbershop space, mainly because they lacked focus. My talents are singing and leading other singers, nothing else.
• At this stage, I don't plan to focus too heavily on submitting talks to multiple tech conferences - a change from last year. I'll see how much energy I have later in the year, but Laracon AU is the conference I care about the most.
• My expectations for Choir Concierge are smaller. I'm not aiming to make more money, I'm simply aiming to contribute regularly and make existing customers a little happier.
• I am NOT aiming to take on board game design professionally. I will allow room for this to change in the future but for now, I'm forcing myself to only work on it when it's fun. It's nearly impossible for me to be interested in something without trying to be the best at it, but I'm keeping this one thing safe for now.

Summary

• Choir: Focus on singing and conducting/coaching, avoid other distractions.
• Career: Consistency at work, submit conference talks (Laracon AU 2025 here I come!), continue this blog
• Creativity: Improve stability and quality-of-life for Choir Concierge, and attempt to design two board games.
• Home: Expand garden and finish patio, read more often, continue current plan for gender transition.
• Relationships: Continue going to GC yearly, increase phone time, increase Chile savings contributions.