New Year Goals // Blogging and Beyond

Happy New Year! Welcome to another end-of-year blog post. This is where I like to brainstorm some ideas for the new year. I hope to stick with them! It definitely doesn’t work out most of the time. My ambitions are always way higher than my free time. But I look forward to trying to keep things obtainable this year.

Let’s start with a little recap for 2024. Overall it was my best year. I’m not a big blog by any means, still very much a small one. But even with this year not being a very writing-heavy year at all, it still topped 2019 overall. I’m not entirely sure why Choo Choo Charles is my biggest post. I mean, 623 views is kind of ridiculous. Especially when a lot of my posts got like, maybe 2 views total on average. It’s alright though! It just makes me look at what made that so searchable on Google. Even long after the game has been released. Home page being second makes sense. I’ll absolutely take that.

Likes are small. Which is understandable. I think trying to interact with more like minded blogs will boost interactions for both likes and comments. Unfortunately it really seems that 2024 was the year a lot of mutual bloggers stopped writing on their sites entirely. I understand having to take time away. Clearly I do it a lot. But hopefully I can find some people I really enjoy talking to on here soon. I don’t really like using Social Media as much these days. Like X or Blue Sky. I just forget about them.

Goals For 2025

Recordings! I got a new capture card a little while back. I really should have started with my Army of Two playthroughs, but completely forgot until now. But I would like to create some videos for these games that I am playing. I touch on this goal each year. I really want to make sure it happens. I’m not much of an editor though, so maybe I look at outsourcing that? Or I can try and learn on my own as well. I’ll figure it out! But I think it would be nice to have these gameplay videos accompanying my written stuff. I’ll never step away from writing over videos, but I think it could reach a wider audience as well.

Podcast? I love that I some how always come back to just wanting to do a podcast. I love podcasting. I love talking with friends about games and life and all that fun stuff. I’ve spoken with a few people about it already and it might be a monthly thing. Just checking in with friends. Talking about whatever we have been up to. Like a check in sort of thing. Keeping it monthly gives me the opportunity to actually play new things, and have new experiences. I think that was a big issue in the past doing weekly stuff. We just didn’t have enough to talk about. As a result, it devolved into a glorified news recap. It just wasn’t fun or interesting anymore. So giving it space between episodes makes the most sense for me. Also gives more time to plan it out.

Weekly Posts! An easy goal for me right not is making sure I have at least one post a week. Normally this can be my default weekend recap posts. But reviews and other small things will accompany those. I will try to make more interesting posts as well. I have stuff in my drafts, but I always worry that I come off kind of stupid with them. Maybe I’ll test the waters with a not too high-brow of a post and go from there.

A really important thing I learned this year is just not forcing games. If a game isn’t clicking, move on from it. Forcing myself to play games puts me at a stand still entirely. Because I feel like I have to play that game, so if I don’t play it I don’t play anything else either. Need to get better with that.

I am looking to branch out in 2025. I want to post more than just video game stuff. I’m not entirely sure what that looks like, but being able to write more is always good. So coming up with stuff I actually like would be nice.

So here’s to 2024! It was a good growth year for the blog. Might not of been great in my personal life, but that’s alright! New year, moving on.

Do you have any resolutions for the new year? Please let me know!