2025 resolutions mid-year checkpoint

(More than) half of the year is over already, and I thought I should update you on my new year's resolutions for 2025.

Put some pressure on me!

Books

Read all books in my top ten: 👍 looking good; mostly accomplished already.

As I anticipated, the list has changed a bit in the last months. During the first semester of the year I did read two from the (old) top ten (the last volume of In Search of Lost Time and Anna Karenina), but I just saw that William Faulkner moved up the ranking, and now I'm still missing one:

1. Ulysses ✔️
2. In Search of Lost Time (seven volumes) ✔️
3. The Great Gatsby ✔️
4. The Catcher in the Rye ✔️
5. One Hundred Years of Solitude ✔️
6. Nineteen Eighty Four ✔️
7. Moby-Dick ✔️
8. The Sound and the Fury
9. Don Quixote ✔️
10. Anna Karenina ✔️

I'm chill about this, because: a) as I said, this goal is instrumental, and the “top ten” will always change anyway; b) I have been dutifully reading what I thought I ought to read for the past ten years, so I know I am good at this (public new year's resolutions or not); and c) I still have six months to read The Sound and the Fury if I want to be really strict about this goal.

Read at least 14 books this year: 👍 looking okay.

I have read ten books in 2025 already (Goodreads says nine, but that's because I read one that is missing from its database)… with a caveat: six of those were graphic novels, 150 pages long on average. I feel I should discount comics somehow because they tend to be shorter and easier to read. Reading 14 comics in a year would be too easy. So I'll count graphic novels as “half a regular book”.

With that, I've read four books plus six “half books”, so seven in total. Which is exactly half of my goal for the year.

Japanese

Study “well” often: ❌ failing miserably.

I sat down to study for a good while (with books, pen and paper) perhaps five or six times around the beginning of the year — then never again.

Take (and pass) the JLPT N4: ❌ quite unlikely.

I didn't bother to take the test in July (obviously); now there's only the exam in December. That one being just five months away, I would probably not pass even if I had some momentum studying (which I do not have).

Nutrition

Make a conscious effort to plan meals more often; eat a little better; cut on bad food: 👎 not looking good.

I behaved very well for the first two months of the year or so, cutting back on some snacks, ingredients and easy meal options that I want to avoid altogether, and eating more of the good stuff I want. Then I relapsed and went back to the old ways. Man, it's amazing the willpower that is required to eat the things that System 2 wants to eat and not eat the things that System 2 wants to avoid. It makes me more humble when I'm too quick to judge people who are fat or eat very unhealthy.

Exercise

Work out better and more often: 👍 looking very good.

These are my stats for the first semester of the year:

• Weight-lifting at the gym: 37 times (once every 5 days)
• Running outside: 15 times (once every 12 days)
• Hiking with family or friends: 11 times (once every 16 days)
• Skiing: 3 days.

Between January and June I hit the gym as many times as in all of 2024. Similar result with hiking: more days out already as in all of 2024. And at this pace, I'll end 2025 with as many running sessions as last year, or a couple more.

Run a half marathon in 2025: ❓ perhaps.

I have my eye on a couple half marathons in the Autumn. I have not started training for that specific goal yet, but this year I ran 10 or 11 kilometres a couple of times as regular sessions, and I know that when the temperature is not too high I can usually go to 12 Km or so without any preparation. So I know I can get ready for 21 Km in a couple of months of training, once the date of the event is set.

Finances

Save more money; review our balance sheet and reduce some expenses: ❌ nothing done yet.

Writing

Finish the short story that I started writing a few years ago: 👎 not looking good.

I sat down to write twice, then never again.