2025 Retrospective & 2026 New Year's Resolutions
Today, I thought I'd spitball a bit on the collective experience that has been our 2025: for our generation, and myself personally. Having a reasonable scope is tricky, considering the breakneck pace at which we experience change in the world around us nowadays... Although I really just hope to look back on the year, share some of my New Year's resolutions, and hear some of yours.
Some of us have had quite a lot to deal with this year — be it from normal life stuff that comes with being a young adult like job changes, weddings, moving, loss, or otherwise. And for many of us, it was quite the large otherwise. Developments outside of our daily lives seemed to happen at a rapid pace politically, economically, and emotionally. There were concerns that couldn't be ignored — and in some places, Zoomers took to the streets to demand change for the better. Huge anti-corruption movements — mostly led by Gen Z — happened in several countries like the Philippines, Morocco, Indonesia, and Mexico, even forcing the impeachment or resignation of government heads in Mongolia, Nepal, Madagascar, Peru, and just on the 11th of this month, Bulgaria.
In the U.S., many of us knew little about these developments since we had pressing problems of our own. Oh, you didn't hear about how incredible it was that our generation elected Nepal's interim leader via Discord, after waving the One Piece straw hat pirate flag all over the capital city? That's because they elected her 2 days after Charlie Kirk was shot. Tariffs, AI, ACA subsidy expiration, government shutdown, Epstein — maybe you could chime in here with something that actually affected your day to day, but keeping up with what's happening out there was undeniably exhausting this year.
And what if you're not tied to the news? In my view, you shouldn't be. What if it was really important to work on yourself? Your goals, your relationships...yeah. All that stuff. As we get to the end of 2025, we all find ourselves reflecting, which of course goes beyond our generation. A lot of this seems to, come to think of it. This was a year of discovering new interests, attempting to invest in friendships new and old, recognizing the importance of physical and mental health, and feeling the (increasingly important) need to become more financially literate. I started a book I received as a Xmas gift about dealing with substantial change in one‘s life, and for some of us, I bet that formed the whole crux of the year. In August, I was hit by an 18-wheeler and lived to tell the tale. A couple days ago, I found out I lost a friend while writing this post. Things really can change in the blink of an eye, for better or for worse.
All parts of any typical experience with being a 20-something human being on Earth, to be sure. What is quite astonishing though, is what happens when you think about everything that makes us unique! What about being a 20-something dealing with this specific, current job market? This specific era of sociability issues put forth by social media chokeholds and Gen Z being the hardest working generation; [[1]] this specific time period's issues with affordability, which are increasing in number and magnitude, etc etc.
Despite the drive being high, our actual ability to invest in things important to us (such as friendships or exploring new hobbies) feels harder than ever; prices are mostly rising everywhere you look, and modern work cultures demand our attention, blurring the lines of work and life. This blog wouldn't exist if there weren't unique challenges with experiencing life as a Gen Z person; I encourage you to read the "About" section of the site if you haven't already. So! Here's something I notice about Gen Z: we quite frequently fail to align with established norms. We're not quite okay with accepting the way things are if they don't fairly serve us, and we fight to get the things we want (Alright, so will Boomers, but that's a story for another time).
Fighting against those odds, remarkably fulfilling things can subsume the more negative experiences in one's daily life...
Here are some things my peers and I did in 2025, which I consider huge wins both for the time being and moving forward.
- We've started fighting back against social media apps hogging our attention in 2025. It's still a struggle, but we witnessed a powerful mental shift this year: an intense desire to disconnect more often, and reconnect with versions of ourselves that only get to exist when we practice interacting with the real world. Discover pages and algorithms are designed to make staying on social media apps awfully easy, even when you don't want to. Distractions were not this powerful or sophisticated for previous generations of young adults, despite the increased connectivity and opportunity they provide on the one hand. Additionally, we have so much information now that we're more critical of ourselves than previous generations from comparison, and it's a type of pressure our parents and grandparents didn't have. We recognized this year that paradoxically, opportunities for growth in our young adult lives can quickly escape us because of opportunity creating technologies. It's just so...tiring. Huge chunks of time are spent "rotting," and we recognized a desperation to start investing that time elsewhere.
- New hobbies! It's the perfect time in our lives to have a new thing that we try become a permanent part of us. I hope it's something that continues into 2026, because I believe that when you do this, your day changes, and when your days are different, your life is different. That keeps things exciting. As much as I push back against too much time spent scrolling away, I'm always inspired by the anti-brainrot content that shows people who discovered something they love to do this year.
- Relatedly, one thing that keeps life exciting is to learn! For me, it started with a 2025 New Year's resolution to learn intentionally rather than accidentally, and it was one of the few that I was successful keeping throughout the year. For the whole of Gen Z, though I'd love to see folks our age reading more books, it seems like we've all at least branched further out this year on content and added educational videos into our consumption.
- Shaping our identity. Don't consider this one achieved, though, since of course it's ongoing. Whether it's purely due to the fact we're at an identity-forming age, or because of confronting a desire to form an identity outside of our work and one single pastime — this is always a super fun one to chase. It's a fantastic reminder that we don't have to stay in the same ol' same ol' we've been in if we want more that's out there, and that goes for any generation.
What do we want in 2026? I've got some personal items, then some broader guesses!
For me? I want more of this; more of the above. It has gotten to the point where I have this massive backlog of things I'd like to learn about, things to try, games to play, books to read, skills to learn, things I would like to host; naturally, the first project of 2026 will be triage to figure out the most important items to move from the "backlog" column to the "actively pursuing" column of future endeavors! Reading will definitely take one of those spots, moreso than in 2025. I really want to communicate how much enjoyment I got out of reading this year compared to 2024; it was the difference between 2-3 books, vs around 10. Which smoothly transitions me to the last thing I'd like to mention at the end of this year....
The power of goal setting, and actually looking at them throughout the year as well as at the end of it. Here's the thing — I'm incredibly happy with the amount that I read this year, even though my goal was 1 book per month, 12 books for the year. This is an example of a goal that, technically, I failed, but if I hadn't been striving for 1 book a month the whole year, I likely wouldn't have hit the 10. I consider it a win rather than failing to hit the number goal, particularly when compared to a couple other written goals for the year that I didn't "move the needle" on. I strongly encourage anyone reading this to think about goals in this way... that is to say, if the goal is reading consistently — and setting an amount to reach for is a valid way to move towards that — congratulations, you've still moved one of your needles in a meaningful way, and therefore achieved the core of your goal: your why.
If a major predilection of yours is a love of travel, I'd argue that writing down the goal of traveling 4 times during the coming year (despite being super busy or unsure how limited you'll be with finances), frequently checking in on how you're going to make it happen, then only hitting 1 or 2 trips instead — is a positive result of intentionally going after such a pursuit that matters to you. You won't be upset that your friend traveled 8 times this year. I'm not upset that some people whose social media stories I saw read 20-30 books this year. Mentally treating it this way helps remind me to focus on things that I can control, and feel good about the areas where I made some good efforts. Another thing going into 2026 is the importance of continuing my efforts from this year towards more socializing; more relationship building and upkeep. Professional goals in your 20s are certainly important, but they should never come with the expense of having quality relationships.
There are a lot of things I'd love 2026 to be. I'd like it to be the year I start dating again. I would love to cement some brand new interests and hobbies I loved most in 2025. I've got a new pursuit I'm working on, and I'm feeling inspired to kick it into high gear. Additionally, I'd like to cut myself some slack on the things I said I'd do in 2025, but didn't. Out of my 7 major goals, I'd say I got about half. There are a couple things worthy of carrying over into 2026 for me — time management and financial goals were my biggest "failures" from my list. One of my roommates and I just finished a fantastic conversation about putting pressure on yourself to hit whatever markers you set for the year. He wasted no time advocating for the idea of not setting numerical goals for the knowledge you'll scold yourself when you fall short, and begin to feel inadequate; it paints the picture of a relationship one may not wish to develop with themselves. Making the stakes feel as low as possible was his clear preference, and honestly, I agree. I still prefer to keep track of my goals, though, because when I don't, I have a hard time making progress on things I'd really like to do during the day, and during the year.
There are so many things I want to do in 2026. So many things I want to learn... not only as opportunities for growth, or even just embracing my curiosity. I think we as young adults want to find out who we are from the things we feel most deeply about, and not just what we think. To do that, we need (and maybe even crave) some new experiences! My guess is that people this year will want to "venture out" for these reasons, exploring whatever they can. And I think for Gen Z, crave is an appropriate word here. When there are things we want or need — with unique odds stacked against us — it becomes more frustrating if time goes by for too long where we feel like we're not moving in directions we'd like to be. In my observation, 2025 was a year of realization and 2026 will be a year of mobilization. There's something to be said for the value of living and simply letting things happen as they do, but I also look forward to seeing the ways in which our generation will drive progress: both in our lives and in the world. Here's to 2026!
-Hudson
