Resolutions suck. These are my intentions for 2025, instead.

Instead of resolutions, I've started setting intentions. They're less strict and don't have a negative connotation. These are the things I intend to get into next year.

One of my favorite photos from 2024. A tawny emperor butterfly briefly graced me with its presence on my finger during one of our family walks at our favorite local nature park. It made me very happy.

Resolutions have always struck me as cold, harsh, and almost kind of an indirect way of telling yourself you’re not good enough. I don’t like that vibe.

Instead, I like to set intentions. In a practical sense, they’re the same thing. But the semantic difference lies in the framing.

The idea with the intentions is that there is no burden of expectation to complete any particular one of them, or any at all, really (though that wouldn’t be realistic to expect, so I don’t expect it).

These are mostly for me, for accountability’s sake, but also to share the things that are currently of interest to me.

Learn more about tarot + do readings for people

I purchased an unconventional tarot deck earlier this year and was so intrigued that I ended up purchasing the standard Rider-Waite-Smith deck so I could learn the “right way” before moving on to variant decks.

I started learning about tarot for the first time this year and find it fascinating. So much meaning hidden in those cards. And if you believe in the idea that nothing is left up to chance, you can uncover some interesting things about yourself and others. It’s a great tool for plumbing the depths of the psyche. So much of what you get from tarot is what it elicits in you as a response.

Are you curious about tarot, too? I’d like to start offering readings for people beginning in 2025. I’ve mostly been doing them for myself and my wife as I get to know the cards and how to interpret them.

If there’s something on your mind—a specific question, situation, or even just a general curiosity—feel free to message me on here. I’m happy to do a reading for free while I’m still building my skills (though I plan to charge a small fee in the future as I gain more experience).

By letting me practice, you’ll be helping me grow—and who knows, you might uncover something meaningful in the process!

Continue researching ESP

2024 was the year that I put to rest any doubts I had about the existence of extrasensory perception (ESP) in humans. What really sold me was Annie Jacobsen’s book, Phenomena, about the development of psychic spy programs in the intelligence community during the Cold War and for a couple of decades afterward (officially, at least). It is a big chunk of book at 500+ pages, but it’s very well-sourced and she is a notable expert on the topic of the intelligence community and all the things around which it wraps its tentacles.

This was my favorite book of 2024, hands down.

If you’re looking for a book to read next year, I can recommend this one.

What solidified my belief in ESP was a podcast I discovered toward the end of the year called The Telepathy Tapes.

It centers on a doctor who works with young nonverbal adults, usually ones with autism, who are remarkably adept at reading their parents’ minds. I think they were looking to make a documentary initially, but started with the podcast route. Obviously, I recommend this one as well. It’s mind-blowing.

Further develop my intuition and learn to listen to it better

I’ve relied mainly on logic my whole life, demoting intuition to a place of irrationality with little value in the practical world. This was a result of my materialistic brainwashing—logic is the currency of materialistic science, whereas intuition is difficult to measure and struggles to find a neat home within that worldview.

Going through The Gateway Tapes has been one of the main drivers of my spiritual awakening this year. Coming to understand that we are more than physical matter, that we can control our energy once we become conscious of it, even that we can trigger out-of-body experiences (OOBEs) at will with enough practice and the right mindset.

It’s also taught me that intuition is a fundamental source of information and revealed to me the value of intuition, perhaps for the first time. I want to learn how to better recognize it and incorporate it into my decision-making process.

I also intend to keep experimenting with ESP experiments such as controlled dice rolling, spoon bending, and remote viewing. I believe that all of these activities are very real and very possible; what I don’t know is if I can tap into those abilities. But I’d like to find out.

Be more present with my family

I spent far too many hours in front of my computer shutting out the world around me—including my wife and son—in pursuit of becoming a web developer over the past couple of years. Then last year I had an experience that led to an epiphany: I don’t want to pursue that dream anymore. I don’t think it would make me happy or fulfilled. So I abandoned it.

All we have is now, and now is when the memories are made by living in the moment. I don’t want to look back on my life and find that I chose myself over my family most of the time. They are the ones who make life worthwhile.

A favorite family photo we took this year in May at one of our “secret spots” (under a bridge in our neighborhood that passes over a little stream).

Learn more about Buddhism

This was the year that I started really learning about the fundamentals of Buddhism in earnest (at least, until I got distracted by a dozen other topics that captured my interest). It’s the closest I’ve found to a “home base” in the world of religion. I don’t consider myself a member of any one religion; I find comfort and truth in many of them.

I intend to continue learning about Buddhism this year to reinforce what I began learning last year. I’ve started with the Zen tradition and like it, but plan to learn about other flavors of Buddhism, too.

Publish my first book, Enter The Gateway

I’m slowly working on my first book, titled Enter The Gateway. It focuses on human potential and how I discovered it’s possible to unlock it using a self-help tape series called The Gateway Experience (or, more commonly, The Gateway Tapes), created by Bob Monroe. He is one of the most well-known explorers of the out-of-body state (aka astral projection) and went as far as creating an institute (The Monroe Institute) dedicated to furthering humanity’s understanding of consciousness and how we relate to it.

Don’t let the cheesy, outdated graphics fool you. These tapes (well, CDs now) contain powerful, potentially life-changing exercises and techniques.

There are some surprising discoveries. For one, it seems to be possible to communicate with nonphysical entities in higher states of consciousness. It also seems possible to program our brains to make our bodies to conscious commands from our egos (such as healing). Many other discoveries are contained within the tapes—they’re mysterious and amazing.

I actually used an exercise called patterning in the tapes to trigger myself to write the book. Patterning can be thought of as a form of manifestation where you set an intention for a month or a year out (while in a heightened state of consciousness), then imagine it has already been done and how you feel about it. After that, you willfully push the energy/intention out into the universe.

I wasn’t expecting it to be as effective as it was and had been skipping patterning for lack of an idea of what I wanted to accomplish in a year. So I thought, I’ve been reading a lot lately; maybe I can capture some of my ideas in a book. I set that as my intention for the one-year patterning exercise. The next day, I woke up and immediately started taking direct action to move toward completion of my goal.

So I used the tapes to inspire myself to write a book about the tapes I used to inspire myself to... you get the idea.

Finish reading 12 books

I fell back in love with books this year. I suppose it was destined to happen at some point… I did major in English Literature for some reason.

I only finished about 7 of my goal of 10 books this year. But that’s because I am a very attention-deficit, sporadic reader and tend to leapfrog between books at the drop of a hat.

If you added up all the pages of all the books I read, but didn’t finish, this year, I’m sure the number would be closer to 20-25. I think the 12-book goal for this year is reasonable. I’m adopting a more structured and intentional approach to my reading queue this year.

Publish 36 posts on Substack (about 3 a month)

I never could’ve imagined the response I’ve gotten on this platform. I figured it would be a typical blog situation of shouting into the void and maybe, possibly, someone would Google something one day and come across my article.

Instead, I’ve found an encouraging community and even made a few friends. I’d like to keep the momentum going next year. A post a week is a bit much for me to commit to, but I think I could manage to average about 3 a month next year.

Edit more videos

I enjoy editing and producing videos. I intend to continue doing that for both my solo projects and my paid clients. If you are in need of a video editor, send me a message! I’ll work with your budget. I mainly just want the experience at this point!

Here’s one of the videos I created in collaboration with an independent film producer client of mine. It was part of a series of behind-the-scenes promo clips for a short film she created. I’m proud of the end result—if you could see the raw footage, you’d understand what a fun challenge it was to stitch this thing together.

Resume the Behold The Spirit podcast

Getting sick with one illness after another (and then getting my wisdom teeth out, and then getting sick again) sidelined the podcast after only a few episodes—but I’d like to revive it at some point next year (once this baby girl is born, which could be any day now).

Add 30 new birds to my life list

Birdwatching has been so fulfilling and exciting for me and my family. We really got into it this year in earnest. It’s so meditative to observe their behaviors, individual mannerisms, and interactions with one another. We’re starting to understand the politics and pecking order of the bird world; how some birds are greedy, some are territorial, and some of them seem like they just really want to be your friend.

I hope to continue discovering new species I haven’t seen this year—hopefully, if life allows for it, including some seen during a family road trip.

One of the crows who stop by each week for peanuts.

Continue meditating regularly

Meditation is paradoxically simple and complex. On the surface, you’re sitting there doing nothing. But as you advance in your meditation practice, you can really begin to take control of your life. Sometimes you gain sudden insights you wouldn’t have had access to if your mind was clouded with the activity of your daily operations.

As a recovering introvert, it also allows me the alone time I still need to satisfy my soul and recharge. I’ve found it very beneficial for my mental health. I plan to continue doing it as often as possible. Eventually, I’d love to go to a weekend silent retreat… but I know that might be a ways off in the distance, since I will need to be here for my new baby this year.

Continue learning fundamentals of yoga on my path to be a yoga teacher

I began practicing yoga begrudgingly last year with my wife. I had a bad attitude about it at first and was often frustrated with myself. But I stuck with it, and I came to really love it. Enough so, in fact, that I decided I would like to become certified as a yoga instructor and commit myself fully to what I see as highly value philosophy and system of values.

I found a place that certifies instructors in Houston and purchased all the books off their reading list. I don’t know if I will be able to complete the certification this year, but I intend to continue reading the books, practicing yoga, and preparing myself for whenever the time is right to complete this goal.

Learn more about alternative medicine (sound healing, energy healing, herbalism, etc.)

A large part of spiritual awakening involves revisiting your previously held beliefs and evaluating them anew. As I become more aware of the design of our hyper-capitalist society, I admit that I’m growing increasingly skeptical of the modern medical establishment.

Don’t get me wrong—I’m not the anti-vaccine type of skeptic. Certain treatments are obviously crucial and necessary—but I think there are far too many predatory practitioners out there who are looking to over-treat patients or simply write them a pharmaceutical prescription and be done with it.

I don’t want to just take a pill for every problem I have. I want to better understand my body, mind, and spirit and how they interact and affect one another. And I want to find other ways to heal myself and others using methods that lie outside the bounds of “modern” Western medicine.

Wishing you all a wonderful 2025

I’ve grown a lot over the past year. Some arguably negative things happened toward the end which brought my spirits down a bit, but that’s just how life goes. The hermetic principle of Rhythm (as observed pretty much everywhere in nature) states that everything has its tides, that all things rise and fall. I’ve had my ups; time to take the downs in stride.

And in the grand scheme of things, the downs weren’t even all that low. It’s all a matter of perspective. I intend to keep working on that, too.

To everyone who has subscribed and read my writing this year, thank you. It means a lot to me to have an outlet for my thoughts and share ideas.

I wish you all a happy new year—truly. It goes without saying that things are probably going to get rocky here in the United States once Trump returns to office. Stay strong, stick together, and we will make it through.