A few years ago, we were inspired to create our bucket list of goals we hoped to accomplish by the end of 2025. Titled “The Brew List” as a play on the coffee theme associated with our blog, it was meant to be a list of things we hoped to accomplish that we would check off, one by one, as we accomplished them.
Looking back on this list, it is funny seeing some of the things we decided to write down because, in some ways, it feels like a time capsule into 2022 when we first wrote it. It’s a glimpse into some of the things we prioritized at the time and things we imagined we’d be able to do within that time frame. For example, one of the goals we listed for our blog was to grow our Instagram following and to post more consistently on that space, and look how that turned out?
While we eventually may find ourselves posting more regularly on Instagram, we just kind of got tired of it. There are other reasons why, but that’ll be another post for another time, perhaps over on our Substack.
I honestly expected that when we’d revisit this list, there would be a lot more items that we have not accomplished yet, because if we’re honest, it wasn’t something we were constantly looking over. We wrote it, detailing some of the things we hoped to accomplish, and looked at it now and then to cross off things I remembered later that we added to the list. While there are a lot of things we have not done yet and some goals we have not included in this, there are a lot that we have done that are on the list we created.
Today, we looked again, but I thought it would be fun to share some of these updates with you regarding where we are on our original list.
ACCOMPLISHED GOALS
Grow the readership on our blog. I’d love to double or triple the amount of viewers we currently have on our blog. (not tripled yet, but it has grown!)Try to post more pins on Pinterest to promote our content.Post once or twice a month on our newsletters.(Our primary newsletter is our Substack now!)Create Philadelphia and Delaware travel guidesfrom our perspective as locals.(Sorta accomplished. My husband and I each wrote a travel guide for Philadelphia.)Write more posts highlighting places in Philadelphia.Create a YouTube Channel (H has been wanting to do this for a long time) or Vimeo to share our travel recaps and videos. I’m not sold on it yet, but putting this there because he might convince me after all.Possibly switch website hosts, if we can find one with just as excellent customer service but more bandwidth space. (Temporary solution is Substack!)Create a separate website to promote our presets and for photography-based posts so that our blog is primarily about travel and lifestyle. (Posting on Substack!)Invest more in our Etsy Ads to promote our shop.Meet up with our friends from Maryland for a weekend that we don’t see often.Visit The White HouseSpend a day or a weekend in New York City.(Visited Brooklyn)Visit Longwood Gardens during their Holiday exhibit. We’ve been before, but it’s been a while and it would be lovely to get to go again.Spend some time in Virginia visiting family.Spend a week or weekend in Newport during the summer again. Possibly turn it into a yearly thing.Create a separate Substack, Medium or another space where I can write creatively without worrying about SEO. I miss aspects of old-school blogging and I’d love to have a space where I can write more creative pieces that don’t pertain to travel and get back to the bare bones of blogging. That being said, I do love blogging here too!(Done! Visit our Substack here)Finally, accomplish the personal goal we’ve been praying for a long time for.(Becoming parents!)Try out new restaurants that we haven’t tried before.Perfect the Philadelphia and the Boston accent.Cook the perfect steak. My steaks are already pretty good, but there’s always room for improvement.Visit new places or cities that we haven’t been to before.Purchase a new car at some point.
UNACCOMPLISHED GOALS
- Interview and feature more local brands or store owners on our blog in a series we’re starting.
- Maybe start a podcast or create audio versions of our posts for listeners who prefer to listen than read? Kinda unsure about this, but adding this here anyway since it IS technically something we’ve talked about over the years.
- Work with local brands, places, and/or museums in Delaware or PA that align with what our audience. Maybe in the form of some sort of staycation or post where we get to highlight some more local establishments.
- Write for, get published with or collaborate with local magazines such as Out and About, VisitWilm, InWilm and/or others.
- Collaborate with other travel bloggers and ask them to write a guest post on our blog or vice versa.
- Consistently post on Instagram at least once or twice a week for at least one month straight.
- Try to engage on Instagram rather than posting and leaving.
- Try to grow our Instagram audience to 1K followers. It’s a bit of a formidable task at the moment.
- Try to grow our Twitter audience more.
- Remove old opt-ins and posts that are irrelevant or outdated (I.E – remove posts of places that are no longer open for business, plugins we no longer use, posts that didn’t perform as well or consist of topics we no longer focus on).
- Reach 100+ sales in our Etsy shop
- Rebrand our Etsy shop with a new name (potentially), new logo (potentially), and new branded colors to appear more cohesive.
- Create and share more freebies in our newsletter for our preset subscribers.
- Start recording brief videos to show examples of before and afters of our photographs.
- Create 10-15 more presets to share in the shop.
- Grow our shop IG audience.
- Try to develop a schedule for releasing new presets more consistently.
- Get back into making art and photography prints to add them to our Etsy shop.
- Visit Vermont and New Hampshire, so we can say we’ve visited all of the states in New England.
- Visit the Biltmore Mansion and spend a weekend or a few days in North Carolina.
- Do a staycation in Philadelphia or Delaware.
- Spend a weekend somewhere cool with our family.
- Visit another presidential library. We’ve already been to 3!
- Spend a weekend in the Pocono Mountains.
- Go down the shore for a day or two.
- Spend a week or weekend in Newport during the fall or winter.
- Speaking of, I’d love to do some writing on the side or help publish posts for an initiative that’s dear to our hearts.
- Learn how to bake things like bread and cookies from scratch.
- Try to host more. I am terrible at hosting events at home.
- Upgrade some elements of my wardrobe and eventually completely phase out of items that I no longer wear.
- Give back to our community. It could be finding another cause to support or volunteering if we have the time and are able to.
- Cultivate a soft life.
- Continue my health and fitness goals by improving my strength over the next three years and focusing on clean eating for the both of us.
- Travel more often, if possible.
- Read more books. I do not read as often as I used to, but I would like to get back into reading -, particularly books I have already purchased that I haven’t finished.
- I would also love to eat at COTE in New York at least once…or twice…or thrice.
- To develop and maintain a healthier lifestyle through fitness and healthy eating.
- Give back to some local communities and/or volunteer.
That’s our list so far! We have less than a year left to go, but some of these items I am already certain we won’t be able to accomplish (such as the Instagram goal) simply because we have not been consistently posting on there and as of right now, do not desire to do so at this time. It was fun getting to see how far we’ve come, and I’m curious to see what other items we’ll be able to check off this list.
Enough of my rambling – what are some goals you accomplished in the past few years that you are proud of?
