I’ve never been big on New Year’s Resolutions. If you decide on a goal, why wait until an arbitrary date to start working on it?

But in the last couple of years I’ve discovered a flaw in that way of thinking. For me and for many others, about the only time we have to think about goals is during that slow period between Christmas and New Year’s. A lot of businesses close that week, and even those that stay open, well, who’s actually working (apologies to you financial types whose fiscal year coincides with the calendar year)? It’s the one time many of us have to actually think. 

And plan.

For me, that planning process starts with reviewing the year past and the goals I’d set forth. I’m less interested in the goals met (hiking 12 new trails!), than in those not met. For example, I wanted to do at least one 10-mile hike a month. I wound up doing half that many. Why? Time? Injuries? Physical ability? In fact, I just wasn’t all that interested in hiking 10 miles in a day. That was a goal of a previous me. What drives me more now? I thought about this and realized what I’m really into now are shorter adventures, but more true adventures. 

In 2022, we moved to a small down north of Greensboro, near the Virginia line. A couple miles from our house is a recently (2017) designated game land. It’s only 1,705 acres, but man is it ever wild. Consisting mostly of farmland abandoned within the last 30 years, it’s a prime example of successional woodlands, a fecund forest ripe with bushwhacking opportunities. It also has still-discernible old farm roads that lend the occasional hand in way finding. In the past month I’ve had four one-hour adventures that were unique escapes worthy, for me at least, of the adventure crown.

So shorter, truer adventures will be high on my list for 2025 (at least in the cooler weather months; it’s a bit buggy and overgrown otherwise). Getting to know this game land better is a goal that excites me. And the goals that excite you are the ones you’re most likely to achieve. 

Sometimes those goals aren’t easy to identify right off. That’s the topic of a post I wrote last year: “Mulling a 2024 goal? Make it the right one.” If you need some guidance in your goal-finding path, check out that post here. 

If you’re fortunate enough to have a goal that excites you spring to the fore, one bit of advice: Don’t wait until January 1 to start on it. Get to it now.