Well, friends, we did it. It can be tempting to jump right in to setting goals and making plans for 2025, but I truly believe that taking the time to reflect on the year prior is so important. For me, reflecting on last year’s accomplishments can give me a boost of confidence to stay the course, pump up the volume and do more, or even walk away from certain things in the year ahead.
Let’s get to it.
Health & Wellness
- Ran 516.7 miles across 119 runs; climbed 22,883 ft; ran for 98 hours and 58 minutes (yes, I considered getting another hour and two minutes in)
- Ran two races: a 10-miler and a half marathon
- Took 108 strength classes over 42 hours and 34 minutes (on Peloton)
- Hiked 77.5 miles across 18 hikes; climbed 11,526 ft (my highest point was 9,393 ft and the most elevation gained in one hike was 2,592 ft); hiked for 35 hours and 15 minutes.
Last year, I wrote about how much I loved getting back into dance (beyond the every other Saturday Zumba class I love). Unfortunately, in 2024, the adult class schedule changed and conflicted with my schedule, so I didn’t dance as much as I would have liked. In 2025, I’m planning to make some adjustments to my schedule so that I can get back into the studio.
Like in 2023, I continued to get monthly chiropractic adjustments and almost-monthly massages, which have both been incredible for my performance, recovery, and comfort.
I also started therapy! I’ve had some false starts in the past, trying to get into a rhythm but never really “clicking” with a therapist. I started seeing someone new in April and have been enjoying the process (mostly, lol).
Personal development
Read 15 books. Standouts include:
- The Dark Forest
- The Passage
- 1Q84
- Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
- Murder on Sex Island: A Luella van Horn Mystery — which was truly wacky and hilarious (“read” in podcast form by the author, comedian Jo Firestone)
I attended a few Creative Mornings lectures and hope to make it to more in 2025 (virtual ones, too). Fingers crossed they host more in Durham this year.
At the end of 2023, I joined the board of Uncomplicated Kitchen, a food security and food literacy nonprofit based in WNC. And at the beginning of 2024, I (somewhat reluctantly) took on the role of Board Chair. Over the course of the year, I worked very closely with the Executive Director on whatever challenges and opportunities popped up, sharing whatever expertise and advice I could. When it came time to review the year and approve the 2025 budget, I was so proud of how far we’ve come! UnKit weathered some proverbial and literal storms and came out stronger and with more focus than before.
Oh, and I got Wordle in one try on December 1st (MAUVE).
Family, Friends, and Travel
I’m combining these categories this year because, with the exception of two trips, all my 2024 travel was to visit loved ones. I’ll take this month by month:
February: Richie and I went to Phoenix to celebrate our niece Clara’s third birthday. The timing was excellent because it was also Scottsdale’s Parada Del Sol, which was so fun and our nieces performed with their Folklórico group at the end; it was Clara’s first performance!
March: We spent a week with Richie’s parents in Ventnor, NJ. We were fortunate enough to stay in an apartment on the floor above them and got to walk or run on the boardwalk multiple times a day. This trip was important because Richie’s dad, Jim, had been diagnosed with Merkel-cell carcinoma in late 2022/early 2023 and he was beginning to show symptoms.
May: Early in the month, we went to Bogotá, Colombia, thanks to Richie being asked to keynote a meeting. We planned to spend three days in Bogotá and three days in Cartagena, but our trip got cut short due to a family emergency and we returned home after Richie’s meeting. I’ll be back, Colombia!
At the end of the month, I traveled to southern California where one of my besties, Katie, and I took a weekend trip to Joshua Tree National Park. I had never been and am glad I went, but I was able to confirm that desert hikes and landscapes aren’t my preference. We did stay in an amazing Airbnb with a fire pit and cowboy pool, and the time spent with Katie was truly life-giving. She and her family were also generous enough to let me crash in the studio apartment in their backyard for a couple days.
After my stint in LA’s South Bay with Katie, I met up with my mom, dad, and my dad’s wife, Kay, to check in to a hotel near Disneyland so that we could watch our nieces perform (again with their Folklórico group) at California Adventure one day and Knott’s Berry Farm the next. We had a blast watching the girls and riding roller coasters in between performances.
July: Back to Phoenix! Because Richie was traveling to New Jersey to be with his dad a lot, I did this trip—this time for our niece Laelia’s seventh birthday—alone. I stayed at my mom’s for a week and we saw Hamilton, took a day trip to Sedona with my dad and Kay, and swam many, many, laps in the pool.
September: September brought another friend reunion! When I was in college (and for a little while after), I volunteered every Saturday at the Boston Living Center. During my time there, I bonded with the staff and other volunteers and in a weird coincidence, one of them moved right down the road from our house in Sylva! So we decided to host a reunion full of hiking, exploring mountain towns, and catching up over the fire.
Richie and I also managed a weekend visit to his parents in Pennsylvania (they moved there in early September). Jim’s cancer had progressed a lot since I saw him in March, and I knew it would be my last visit with him. I was grateful to get a great afternoon on the patio with him, talking about music, Dairy Queen Blizzards, and men’s fashion, along with a lovely walk on a trail that winds through their community.
Once again, thanks to Richie’s speaking calendar, I was able to tag along with him to Kansas City and I had such a great time! Highlights included antique shopping, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, and, of course: barbecue.
(We’re still in September.) My mom was planning a visit to NC and because we had such a hard time finding a pet sitter, she came out early and took care of Gloria and Rosie while we were in Kansas City. We had planned to take her to Sylva for a few days when we got back, but Hurricane Helene hit, so we stayed put in Durham.
It was for the best, because in early October, Richie’s dad’s hospice nurse urged Richie to get up to PA as soon as possible. Jim passed away shortly after and I went up for the funeral.
My great uncle Johnny passed away the week before Jim. I blogged about them here. (The TL;DR is that it’s so wonderful when your actual family is also your chosen family.)
In 2025, I plan to take more of my vacation time to visit far-flung places, including a couple more American cities I’ve never been to.
Work & Side Hustles
If you’ve followed my blog for a while, you know that I mostly write about work-related things. I’ll often take a conflict or a challenge that I had at work and apply the lesson I learned to home and other parts of my life (or vice-versa). You might have noticed that I barely blogged this year. That’s, in large part, because of my work situation.
In late January, Meetup was acquired by the Italian tech company Bending Spoons (yes, that’s a reference to The Matrix). The Bending Spoons CEO and transition team were very clear about their intentions: they were going to move all operations to Italy and all Meetup employees would be laid off; some pretty much immediately, while others would stick around to ensure a smooth transition. Well, it’s been 11 months, and I am still a Meetup employee!
While I am extremely grateful to be employed and doing a job I really enjoy, I am in a unique position: I am one of only a handful of “original” Meetup employees; I know I’m going to be laid off eventually, but given the direction of the company, that date has not been set (I’m pretty comfortable with uncertainty, but this situation took it to a new level); most of my colleagues are Bending Spoons employees (Spooners), but I am still a Meetup employee, so we have different benefits, company cultures, Slack servers, etc.
I’ve been tempted to blog about some of the unique challenges I’ve encountered as a result of some of the reasons I listed above, but it just hasn’t felt right. It could be survivor’s guilt, or that the challenges are perhaps a little too specific to my exact situation.
Since I know that I’ll be reentering the job market eventually (but not yet), I’ve been trying to learn as much as possible while paying close attention to what I enjoy and what I’m good at so that I have a good idea of what to look for when it’s time.
Speaking of learning, as a fun distraction, I’ve been dabbling in the vintage and antique jewelry community. Since I already sell clothes on Poshmark, I started listing some of my personal jewelry collection that I was ready to part with there as well. I also started an Instagram account specifically for this endeavor @TAFFjewelryco. In 2025, I have plans to level-up this sparkly experiment through collaborations with some extremely talented individuals as well as more formal education in the industry.
I don’t expect any year to be all rainbows and puppy breath, but there was a lot about 2024 that was truly awful. Mixed in with the bad was a lot of good, though, and upon reflection, I hope that I can see the good for what it is, even without having the bad to compare it to.
This year, I’m lucky to be turning 40. While I’m not terribly excited about the physical changes that come along with perimenopause or the increased doctors appointments for screenings I never had to have before, I am stoked to enjoy the freedom that will result from my rapidly-dwindling repository of fucks to give.
Happy New Year!
