This is a thread for looking back on what you accomplished, on or off BotB, in 2025, and setting goals for 2026!

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In last year's thread, I set three goals for 2025.

First was more of an anti-goal: after attempting to complete the 2024 Advent Calendar and burning out, I resolved to not attempt any completionism in 2025 and be more careful about picking majors that really interested me. I succeeded at this: while I didn't enter as many battles this year, I'm seriously proud of every major entry I made, including a picture I'm now using as my desktop background, a game I'm continuing to playtest, and a track which, based on a comment from jangler, led to a fun little math problem.

My second goal was to host more OHBs, and this didn't go as well: I only hosted three. It's been tricky to proactively set aside time to host.

My third goal was to do a collab, and I did two, as well as a third outside of BotB! Very pleased with how those turned out.

My main goal for 2026 is to submit two more Decadent Decade entries, and ideally three more. (That could be a tall order.) I'd also still like to host more OHBs: I think one per month is a good target to aim for. And more generally, I'd like to get more serious about transcribing my favorite pieces of music and studying what makes them work.

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What are some 2025 accomplishments you're proud of, or goals from 2024 you followed up on? What are your goals for 2026?

how convenient that this thread exists. i spent the last like 2 hours writing up a bunch of text about how 2025 went for me, so i'll just paste it here..

2025 was a year of big changes for me, not unlike the one before it. however, i'm much more happy with where i am now compared to the start of 2025
i feel like january was a turning point where my studies started slowly becoming less and less of a thing i wanted to pursue and more of a thing that held me back solely because i couldn't bring myself to just leave it. but it was also a month of great things for me in music. this was the month when i made some of my best pieces yet, ones which i'm still proud of to this day. it was also the month where i really started to become active on botb, a decision that i absolutely do not regret. i'm honestly inclined to call 2025 the year of botb for myself
february didn't really have much going on, i believe i was focusing on the initially interesting 2nd semester subjects in uni
march was the month where the story of vivid/stasis ended. genuinely an insane experience to have seen it all slowly unfold with each major update. also some music as well
april! was a bit rough but towards the end things started to get a bit better. started to get back into music more from what i remember
may! botb minecraft server was so fun. and i started playing around with (music) chips and stuff! however uni was also being stressful at certain points with exams
june had a lot of various things going on, mainly my first ever opl3 cover, and also some self-discovery
july was a month where i kinda did whatever. making both all sorts of music and sounds and writing all sorts of code. and that's about it! also creature identity discovered
august was uh. not much going on and tbh after the start of it i was kinda at a low point, however..
september came with some nicer things. finished my greatest bytebeat project and there was again a brief moment where my studies were a bit interesting because of new stuff, but i already knew that wasn't going to last
october! i turned 20 years old. wow. also plans to cancel my studies started here though i was slow to actually do things. and i also moved into the place where i live now! (with my family still to be clear lol)
november.. trying to get my life together, somewhat. also made the dream elixir cover this month which as of now stands as my best fm work. and had some confusions about myself which tbh are just a regular thing by now lol
december. advent calendar!! had heaps of fun participating and trying out all sorts of new things that i hadn't dared to try before. also got a job at a small store so my neet arc was very shortlived. got some nice presents for christmas and had a pretty nice new year's eve

and now i finally finished writing this after like 2 hours of lying in bed and scrolling through past messages in dms and whatnot. hopefully this year will have more great things in store.. life seems to be getting better after all

I forgot about my own thread from last year.
let's see what my goals were...

- get to lvl32 (check)
- get the remaining badges (not check) - I moved this goal to 2026 actually
- do collabs again (check?) - I did a few, especially at the beginning of the year. but did a lot less than I wanted in the second half of the year

so on paper, I only really accomplished one of my three botb goals. but I still feel good about how 2025 went because it *feels* like all my goals are reached. when I stopped focusing on botb it was during a time when mioh and me did a lot of travels together, worked on other projects etc, so my non-botb goals have almost all been met.

for 2026, my botb goals are:
- getting the remaining badges (or at least reach 100 as a start)
- do moar collabs !
- finish like ~20 more dd2-covers
- finish a big track I've been working on for a long time now

let's see how many of them I can actually reach c:

2025 was a rough year for me. i overextended a bit on a lot of things and while it was fun, burnout hit me hard.

but i’m a new guy this year. i’m an adult in literally eight days. i’m shipping off to university this coming fall. life is changing, and i’m honestly looking forward to a bit of a break in the monotony. my parents aren’t super supportive of my musical and artistic abilities and i’m ready to move on out and maybe have a bit more time to enjoy that for myself and make my own choices.

but i guess you didn’t come to hear about that. as for my goals on this site? probably won’t be participating as much as i was before. i’ll try and swing a few majors, but i most likely will be doing other things.

i would like to get a few badges if i can manage. i’m pretty close on a lot of them and i want to get to seven so i can host whatever i like. either way, got a ways to go, but a smaller gap than last year.

anyway. thanks for everyone’s support this past year. you guys rock. looking forward to another one.

wowie!!! i reached all my 2025 goals:
- hugged some more botbrs
- finished and released my first album!
- made more than halfway progress to level 30

here are some goals for my 2026:
- reach level 30
- enter at least 5 more formats into decadent decade ii
- get 3 new badges!!! ( from 22 to 25!)

my accomplishments here are nothing and my goals are that I start doing something

I feel like I had a pretty great year overall, and it all will carry over into 2026, so I guess I have no particular resolution but to keep pursuing what I already am:

- I wanted to start reading more again, including nonfiction (never been much of a nonfiction reader outside of school). I ended up at about 16.5 books in 2025, and that's despite me kinda dropping off in the spring and summer. quite happy with this, and looking forward to keeping it going! I really enjoyed pretty much everything I read

too.

- started running again partway through the year; this is going very well and I also anticipate it continuing well in 2026! goal is to do Even More. I'd like to try a "most days" schedule instead of every other day, if my little legs can handle it.

- becoming more acclimated with my new city and getting out and doing more things, meeting more people! I am very happy with my progress... and I love it here! got good plans for even more of this in 2026. rebuilding IRL community has felt really rewarding.

- relatedly, recently purchased a vintage alto sax to get back into playing! we have a community wind ensemble I'm gonna join up with, and I aspire to play a bunch for my own work and others' too. I'm having so much fun with this. I don't think I've really played "for myself" since like, middle school. (a cool stretch goal will be to find a good guitar teacher here... year of The Instrument...)

- working on my tiny little yard and building a garden! year 1 was full of big experiments, many of which did not succeed, but I absolutely loved it, and I'm so excited for spring because I'll have a more focused attack this year lol. most excited to see what happens with my new asian pear tree this year.

2025 was the best year of my life so far.

- I went to Japan with my best friends for 3 weeks, which was a life goal of mine and we want to go again sometime. I spent a night at club mogra in Tokyo, which was my absolute highlight of the trip. Also went to the arcades a lot and I wish we had some actual ones here in Germany.

- Got more into photography. Started out with an analog camera for Japan and got an actual modern camera after the trip.

- Went to chipwrecked alone and met up with some BotBrs there 😎. Planning was a bit stressful, but it was absolutely worth it.

- Went hiking with some good online friends over a weekend.

- spent a few days with kleeder and mioh.

- Went to a small halloween party with people I've known online for more than a decade but never met. That was very cool.

- I somehow still have a decent amount of savings, which is good for my plans for next year.


2026 I want to:
- write an actual structured piece of music with more than an A-part, lol.
- go to chipwrecked once again.
- go to a convention. The last time I went to a convention was more than 10 years ago, lol.
- Make some new friends and meet up some more with old ones.

- go to university again to learn how to make video game. This is a big undertaking for me and it will set me back a bit financially, but it's also a dream of mine. I still need to work on my portfolio for that but the required aptitude test will be easy.