UPDATE: 25 for 2025 List

Oh man, what a freaking year for the list.

Friends, I wish I could tell you I lived my word, but the truth is this year broke me a little bit. The move picked at all the loose strings of my soul, and starting a job that was a poor fit was the unraveling. I lost my way for most of the year, and I think you’ll see some of that in this recap.

If you read the Year in Review 2025, you already know how much changed. What you didn’t see was how that chaos played out against the goals I set at the start of the year. The short version? Some things got done, a lot didn’t, and even my one-word theme fell by the wayside. Before we get into what happened, here’s a quick refresher on the list itself.

The bestie and I started this annual list back in 2019, inspired by the Happier podcast. Each year, we map out goals across different areas of life and pair them with a one-word theme to guide how we want to show up.

When I was choosing my word for 2025, I knew I wanted something that reflected how I hoped to move through a year of transition, how an ideal version of myself would show up. I chose: ROCK. Steady. Grounded. Strong for my family. Anchored in my health goals. And then the year had other plans.

So instead of dissecting every miss or overanalyzing what didn’t happen, I’m going to focus on what did. The wins first, then everything else in one clean sweep.

The Big Wins

Run The Lines: Run Every U-Bahn Route in Stuttgart

This is by far my proudest achievement of 2025! When I wrote this goal, I thought I would be tackling the routes solo, but Mark surprised me by completing every single run as well! Don’t tell him, but I’m secretly proud of him for busting out his longest run ever during this project—a whopping 19.5 miles that literally went across the whole city. For the stats and numbers people, with this goal we ran 14 lines for a total of 154.85 miles within five months. It turned out to be a great way to say farewell to a city we called home for the past four years.

Buy a House

Another major change for our family! After renting for the past 21 years, we finally reached a point where putting down roots was a financially-viable and logistically-feasible option. Now comes the fun part of making it ours and doing everything we haven’t been able to for the past couple of decades. After touring seven houses, the one we ended up falling in love with had an amazing kitchen and backyard, complete with a pool. As one would expect, quite a few house-related projects ended up on the 26 for 2026 list.

Update My Resume (And Get a Job)

Most definitely not an exciting task to complete but a necessary evil. I started half-heartedly applying to jobs while we were still in Germany, not getting so much as a nibble. I ramped up the efforts after we moved and were a little more settled at the beginning of July. By August, I received a handful of interviews and a couple of offers, one of which I accepted. I quickly found the job was a poor fit and made the switch to a better aligned career in December. While my search was fairly short, I will say the job market is rough right now. Honestly, the roughest I’ve seen in all of our moving. I feel fortunate that I was able to land in a good spot at the end of it all.

Free Space: PR Every Single Race Distance

Between the U-Bahn challenge and training for a fall marathon, 2025 ended up being my biggest running year to date. I finished the year with 943 miles (1,518 kilometers), blowing solidly past my 2023 record of 850 miles and a far cry from the 365 miles dream I failed to hit as a baby runner in 2017. In addition to upping my mileage, the past couple of years I’ve also been working to improve my speed. I had zero intentions of PRing every single race distance in one year, but that’s exactly what happened.

The 5K PR came first during a threshold workout at the end of January with a 28:22 finish, a whole minute faster than my previous PR. The 10K PR followed during an U-Bahn run. It was a chilly February day and I found that with some effort I was able to keep Mark within my sightline, something that usually doesn’t happen since he’s quite a bit faster. I lost him at a red light around 3.5 miles in, but saw that I was pushing a relatively quick (for me) pace. I held on and ended up grabbing a new sub-hour 10K PR of 58:15 (previously 1:03). These were both monumental accomplishments since a sub-30 5K and a sub-hour 10K were benchmarks I dreamt of hitting since beginning my running journey more than a decade ago.

The final PRs came during the Las Vegas Marathon. While the race didn’t go as planned (more on that in the Year in Review 2025 blog post), I did end up with a half marathon PR of 2:20 and marathon PR of 5:09 (previously 5:19). It finally feels like the years of work are paying off, and I’m excited to keep finding the flow.

The Smaller Wins

morning Pages, Five Days Per Week

My Streaks app says I completed this 56 percent of the time, but I’m counting it as a win. Why? Inevitably, this habit completely stopped during the move, but once we were more settled in July, I spent most mornings journaling my thoughts. Towards the fall, I started sharing my entries with ChatGPT and it helped me connect patterns throughout the weeks and months. This analysis helped me see that my job was a poor fit and that I needed to strategically find a way out sooner rather than later. Taking 10 minutes after I shower to journal one page has become a part of a soothing morning ritual that I see continuing for the foreseeable future.

Overall Strength Goals

This is another aim that ebbed and flowed throughout the year. Before leaving Germany, I was fully committed and hitting four sessions a week. I was the strongest I’ve been in recent memory. I even got to the point where my top two ab muscles started peeking through, a lifetime first for me! With the move, I lost my gym access and then went straight into marathon training, and strength took a supporting role. Once the marathon ended, we built the home gym of my dreams using my previously unspent Christmas money. Now, I’m slowly but surely clawing my way back to where I was.

The Happier Annual Challenge: Read 25 in ‘25

I felt like I did much worse with this goal than I actually did, but the Streaks app says otherwise. I ended the year completing this task 74 percent of the time. Through the move, my reading was fairly spotty and my headspace was completely toasted for much of my time in the wrong job. Now that I’m in a better place, I’m able to focus more deeply and for longer periods and reading is much more enjoyable again.

Prep for PCS & Create a House Wish List

While this was one of our rougher moves, we did prep as best we could. We canceled all of our services and utilities and passed inspection on our apartment. Once we moved, Wayfair boxes landed on our doorstep almost daily as we started to build our new home. Of course, I found it pretty exciting at first, but eventually decision fatigue started to hit and I was sick of picking out new rugs and finishings for our space, and funds ran low since I hadn’t found a job yet. I started making a running list of all the projects we wanted to do and things we wanted, and slowly but surely, we’ve been chipping away at it.

Stay On Top Of My Health: Establish Care In New City

I’m happy to report I got all of my annuals in and only have finding a dentist left on the list, though I’m not due for that until March. This isn’t the most exciting item on the list, but preventative medicine is so important, and if a gold star increases the chances of it happening, then by all means, go for it.

Get A Girls Trip On The Books

Ugh. This one makes me a little sad. We had the chat. All of us were a little strapped for cash, since two of us had just bought houses. So we decided that instead of going somewhere, we would do a staycation at one of our houses. The group picked Veterans Day weekend in Las Vegas. As the trip neared, the government shut down, leaving one of our crew without a paycheck. The weekend of, the government shutdown was reaching a new record in number of days, causing panic at the airports and resulting in the other member of our crew to back out. I’m sad we didn’t get the reunion I know we all needed, but I’m hoping that we’re able to make up for it in the coming year.

Everything That Was Abandoned

As you can see, this year was incredibly busy and had quite a few moments of uncertainty. Even though I like to think I can do it all, the reality is that I’m human too and when stress peaks, the more lofty goals fall to the wayside. I used to feel a lot of shame about not crossing off everything on my list, but now when I look at what I did accomplish it’s no wonder some of these didn’t happen. There will always be time to read more classic literature or finally learn how to set up the tripod, but it’s not every year you buy a house. Here’s everything that got left behind in 2025, without a second thought:

• Read five classics

• Pare down stuff before moving (Germany doesn’t have anything equivalent to Goodwill)

• Create a living will

• Make a literary recipe

• Do something special for milestone birthdays (I’d say this was more of a remove than a miss. After so much travel over the past four years, it was nice to spend time at home.)

• Create a social strategy for Instagram accounts (Can’t post if you’re not knitting…)

• Work on the blog for 5 days a week for 25 minutes (Started strong and petered out in March)

• Learn to use the tripod for photoshoots

• Find an in-person hobby group

• Send holiday cards

• Monthly progress pics and measurements (There was about 50 percent compliance on this)

• Be a tourist in our own city: 25 events or activities (Again, about 50 percent on this one, unless you count every U-Bahn run)

• Go on 25 outdoor adventures (See above)

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Looking back, the list didn’t go the way I planned, but it did show me what mattered when everything else felt unstable. In the past, PCS years usually meant a complete dismantling of my health and fitness routines, sending me into months of inactivity and the inevitable weight creep. This time around, I made fitness my non-negotiable. Even with the stress of an international move, buying a house while still living overseas, and starting a soul-sucking job, movement was my medicine and the one thing that made everything else feel okay.

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