New Year, Same Goals: Building a Life Through Travel and Curiosity

As 2025 came to a close, I found myself uninterested in reinventing my life and more interested in understanding it. Last year was shaped by movement across borders, across languages, and across versions of myself I hadn’t fully met yet. Travel, language study, and everyday exploration weren’t just goals on a list but my tools for growth, reflection, and reminders of why I started this journey in the first place.

At the beginning of 2025, my goals were simple yet ambitious: to level up my Korean, Thai, and Spanish skills, and continue traveling in a way that felt intentional rather than rushed. Looking back, the results are mixed. While I feel I fell short in Korean, my Thai and Spanish improved greatly, and instead of seeing that as a failure, I see it as information. It showed me what worked, what didn’t, and where my energy naturally flows.

Learning Through Music: The Strategy I’m Carrying Forward

One of the biggest lessons 2025 taught me is that how I learn matters more than how much time I spend learning. Learning through music is how I learned to read Thai. Songs turned tones, scripts, and unfamiliar sounds into something emotional and memorable. While I can already read in Korean and Spanish, I realized I haven’t been using music as deeply in those languages, and that’s something I plan to change. Moving into 2026, I’m not setting new language goals so much as leaning harder into the strategies and systems that already work for me. Music will be a bigger part of growing my vocabulary, comprehension, and connection to each language.

Letting Travel Fit Into Life, Not Take It Over

Travel followed a similar pattern. Rather than chasing big, exhausting trips, in 2026 I’m shifting toward smaller adventures—both in and out of state. Short trips, slow days, familiar streets in unfamiliar places. Travel doesn’t always have to be far to be meaningful, and this past year reminded me that exploration can be woven into everyday life.

Outside of travel and language learning, I’ve felt a strong desire to experience as much as possible through my tried and true hobbies and by trying new things. Exploration doesn’t only live on airplanes or in passports—it lives in curiosity. And sometimes, it lives in fear.

Exploration Beyond Travel: Curiosity in Everyday Life

This past week, I received my scuba diver certification.

I’ve always found the ocean a bit scary. Its depth, its power, the feeling of not being in control. Last year, I started confronting that fear slowly through snorkeling, surfing, and eventually dipping a toe into scuba diving. I never would have guessed that diving wouldn’t just change how I see the ocean, but how I see myself. Floating beneath the surface, breathing calmly, trusting my body and my training was grounding in a way I didn’t expect.

It reminded me that growth doesn’t always announce itself loudly. Sometimes it happens quietly, one brave decision at a time.

As I look toward 2026, I’m not chasing new goals. I’m choosing continuity. I’m choosing to deepen what already brings me joy, to trust the systems that support me, and to stay open to experiences that stretch me just enough to feel alive.

New year. Same goals. And honestly? That feels exactly right.

And this is only the beginning.