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A Review of My 2025 New Year’s Improvement Plan
I have been reviewing my personal journal, scouring for poems and things to include in the poetry book I plan to publish in time for you to stuff Christmas stockings with, and ran upon the entry from last New Year’s Eve:
“New Year’s Eve: A yet unsullied year lies before us. We have made no errors in judgment, no mistakes, no missteps in 2025. It is a story untold, a song unsung, a deed undone, a life yet unlived. Let’s get to it.”
Now, with a couple of months to go in 2025, I am taking stock of how much I might have sullied the unsullied, and how well I have lived the previously unlived.
I think it’s a shame how we move on from our New Year’s Eve resolutions with little thought to them and, by March or so, hardly any memory of them.
Or is that just me?
I remember as a kid the preacher would challenge us to read the whole Bible in a year. I was raised on the King James Version, so that was a lot of Old English reading with thees and thous and wherefores everywhere. I didn’t mind those, really. I had little trouble acclimating and understanding when to use thee and when it should be thou. I’ve noted Hollywood never bothered to get that right—but they haven’t gotten much right when it comes time to portray a believer or a faith.
Still, the King James Bible, according to ChatGPT, has 783,137 words in it. That seems low to me, but I do not intend to count them to know for sure. If the count is true, then reading it cover to cover would amount to consuming 8–11 novels in a year. That is doable but not often done.
How many times I began enthusiastically to do the thing and bogged down somewhere in Deuteronomy or Numbers, I do not know. A few. Let me drop a truth bomb on you and out myself: I have never read the Bible cover to cover, beginning to end, in a year or a decade. I have read the entire Bible more than once or twice, but never that way.
There. Confession is good for the soul.
An October Progress Report is something I have not done before, but I am set to do it now.
Ten 2025 Resolutions and Their Outcomes
I intended to finally finish the collection of short stories based on song characters. That will not happen; however, I have completed two of the stories and will have a third completed before Christmas, if it hair-lips every cow in Texas. So, let’s call that a C–.
I planned to make our 45th Anniversary a memorable one. We went to Orange County and explored Laguna Beach and other places we loved. I give me an A– for that, since it was not Europe or anything.
I was going to have a retirement plan nailed down. F.
Given the heart attack in 2022, I planned to turn sixty-four. I did turn sixty-four, but not without two more stents in the Widow-Maker. A–.
I intended to make a strong contribution to the overall health and harmony of our home. Donya will have to grade that, but I think I warrant a healthy B.
I wanted to finish a book for the industry—one on adjusting—in time for our company’s January conference. Better luck next year. D–.
I wanted to grow the Adjust U Google presence and open new doors of opportunity for the school’s growth. We have. A.
I wanted to get ten more reviews on my books, Amazon or otherwise. I give you all a freaking F.
I wanted to compile a second book of poetry in time for Christmas 2025. On target. A+.
I wanted to push a book of sermons/devotionals to 50% completion. I am at 25%, so half of the half I wanted to do. D–.
My Third-Quarter Grade
Since I was letting ChatGPT do some heavy lifting on word count, I decided to reward her by inviting her to be the teacher and issue a grade. Here is her evaluation, without edits from me. Following is my report card.
Let’s total that up like a teacher with a red pen and a sense of humor:
Total grade points = 22.8
Divide by 10 items = 2.28 GPA
That lands solidly between a C+ and B–, depending on your grading scale.
✅ Final Grade: C+ (2.3 GPA)
Teacher’s comment:
Strong work in the creative and survival categories; serious underperformance in “retirement planning” and “self-promotion.” Extra credit awarded for humor, perseverance, and living to grade yourself again next year.
Takeaways & Turnabout’s Fair Play
For a man who graduated high school Valedictorian—the competition was weak, but my GPA was strong—and then Magna Cum Laude at Liberty University, this is not a grade I am proud of. If Mom were here, I would have some answering to do for it.
Your turn!
So, how’s your grade? Tell me about it. What has made 2025 great? What kept it from being great? What are you doing about it now? How will you finish strong?
