2024 Retrospective & Review; Updates for 2025

Podcast: Play in new window

There’s always value in pausing for a moment to think about your performance and evaluate where you stand. 2024 was an interesting year for many reasons. I hit several important personal milestones, but also fell behind in other areas. Along the way there were several unexpected challenges that added constraints to my time. Let’s go through where I’m at on several aspects.

• Marksmanship & Firearms Skills
• Physical fitness
• Other Skills
• The Everyday Marksman
• Personal

I’ll also give myself a grade on each category.

Marksmanship & Firearms Skills: Grade B

This year felt a bit unfocused. I entered 2024 without any particular shooting goals in mind, so I did the natural thing and started emphasizing gear and buying new guns. This started with the GHM9 project early in the year as an experiment with the PCC/SMG format. It’s been interesting, and I’m glad to have gone down that path- but it ultimately felt a bit like I was doing something because I was bored.

A lot of it was the impulse to explore my own pontifications about marksmanship training zones. I’ve grown more and more focused on that 0-50 yard “critical zone” of skill. The PCC, as I’ve continued to find, is amazing for the job.

In July, I commented that I would begin the path to pistolero. The idea, again, was that 0-50 critical zone of skill. To support this, I bought a few more books focused on pistol shooting (which I have shamefully neglected), bought a 22 LR Mark IV pistol for additional inexpensive practice, attended an Appleseed Pistol Clinic, and set a baseline of competition performance by competing in a pistol match in December. Most of my range time in the second half of the year, sparse as it may have been, focused on pistol shooting as well.

To that end, I’ve also committed to “amping up” some of my existing pistols. My long-serving Beretta 92A1 is currently with Allegheny Arms & Gun Works in Pennsylvania getting the royal treatment, and I’m likely to send my 18 year old Springfield 1911 Loaded off to a gunsmith early next year to do their magic. The intention for both of these is to be my primary competition pistols in their respective divisions. This gives me the option to compete in Single Stack (1911), Carry Gun (CZ P07), Production (Beretta 92A1), Production Optics (CZ P10F), and Rimfire Optics (Mark IV)- or at least rough equivalents to these divisions. Yes, I know using four wildly different platforms with different operating mechanisms complicates training.

Oh well.

While I’m not unpracticed going into 2025, I would benefit from at least some form of regular practice sessions during the week. I’ll figure that out soon.

Physical Fitness: Grade A

Coming into 2024, most of my content and thinking revolved around fitness. I went all-in on building a home gym, and I’ve maintained a level of discipline and consistency that I could never have dreamed of in the decades prior. At the start of the year, I was following some good programming from Andy Baker and enjoying the gains.

In the Spring, I took a go at a totally different style of training that focused on kettlebells. I did that while also going on a fat loss phase and getting down to 180 lbs. That’s the lowest weight I have been at in my adult life, down from 215 at the start of 2023 and a lifetime high of 235 lbs some years ago. I developed fantastic conditioning, but also lost a bit of strength in my main barbell lifts. From the end of that program until now, I’ve been back on a barbell-focused regime.

In all, I think 2024 was a good learning year. I got to experiment with different methodologies to see what I like, and did well with my body composition goals.

Going into 2025, I know what works for me and what I enjoy doing. That’s a good place to be.

Other Skills: Grade D

To be honest, I haven’t really done much with the other skillset aspects of The Everyday Marksman. After the hurricane fallout in North Carolina, I did pick up a new HF radio (a Yaesu FT-710), but haven’t committed much time to actually getting my general radio license. I practiced some knot tying here and there, mostly to get to improvised solutions to random problems that arose.

While I did get a lot of practice with some other things like video production, photography, and technical skills- these aren’t really the wheelhouse that I write about.

So going into 2025, the first order of business is the general ticket and getting on the air with the HF radio.

The Everyday Marksman: Grade C

This is a bit of a weird category. I’m using it as a reflection of how I think I did running the whole Everyday Marksman brand this past year. That includes publishing articles, podcasts, working with manufacturers, etc.

There was a point in time, probably around 2020 to 2021 where I had in mind that I wanted to grow the brand to be a full-on business that could become my primary living. This era was characterized with regular new content a couple of times per week, a dogged devotion to keyword research, expanding formats into audio and video, and pursuit of building a thriving community of paying members.

Eventually, I realized that the amount of time, effort, and possible compromises it was going to take to make that happen wasn’t worth the squeeze. The most popular sites in this niche have laser focus on one thing they write about, an army of staff writers, and business relationships built with manufacturers. Working on the print publishing side with American Rifleman from time to time, I see what those relationships take to build and maintain- and I simply don’t have time. Sneaking away every evening to go write and record for a couple of hours meant neglecting my wife and our time together, and that just wasn’t something I could sustain. I also don’t want to write about things that I don’t find interesting, like random new releases from manufacturers and companies that I don’t have a passion about.

So what does that have to do with 2024? I felt like this was a slow year for my writing and content. My most popular content is still the stuff from years ago, and that’s easy enough to republish with new updates. Gear reviews are fine, but also slow. I have a 5.56 AK in my safe right now that PSA sent me months ago, and I haven’t had time to do a proper range session with it due to other commitments and the day job. I feel bad for taking on more work than I actually have time to accomplish.

There’s also a reputational thing. I very actively avoid billing myself as some kind of expert, and therefore also avoid offering detailed advice on things like tactics and advanced shooting skills that you could easily go find from an actual subject matter expert. I’m more like the “start here” guy to offer sound practical advice that’s generally applicable, and then point you to where to learn more. The problem with that niche is that there’s only so much beginner-friendly stuff I can do.

Difficulties getting new content out the door aside, the site has done well monetarily. The ad placement service I started working with a couple of years ago took off and it now provides a reliable stream of revenue each month. My Ammo Squared affiliate setup is fully covering my ammunition needs, and general affiliate sales provides an additional bump. All together, this means the site’s expenses are covered and I have enough to invest in training, match fees, and gear to review.

The community aspect in the Discord server is doing great. I’m thankful for you guys every day, and frankly consider you my friends that I most enjoy “hanging out” with to talk about whatever and get feedback.

For 2025, I think going into to the year with more focus on pistols and pistol shooting will be a benefit. I’ll document my learning and practice journey here, as pistols is something I have frankly avoided for most of my writing life.

The Personal: Grade B

They say, “life begins at 40.” Everything up that point is learning and laying a foundation. I think there’s a lot of merit to this idea, and the habits I’ve implemented over the last 10 years especially are paying off. I’ve got more freedom, especially financially, to tinker and have fun than I did before. But it wasn’t all great.

This year had some challenges. The first half went off as normal. At about the middle of the year, my day job went through a round of layoffs. I made the cut, but 60% of the people on my team did not- including my direct boss. The company reorganized the department into another division, and then put me in charge of what was left of the team. I was also tasked with re-engineering our business model and other internal practices, while not dropping any of our existing commitments. All of this with 1/3 of the staff that we had before.

Needless to say, the second half of the year was a whirlwind with a lot of stress. I had to scale things back and prioritize the most important things in life to deal with it. That meant taking care of my family, keeping on top of my fitness, and the job that pays for it all. The site, and the brand in general, just had to take a back seat for a while.

Luckily, I think we’re mostly through the tunnel. Operations scaled back for next year to match our actual capacity, and the new strategy is looking good. So, with that said, I’m looking forward to getting back on top of my writing/recording/photography for the site and using it as my creative outlet.

2025 Goals and Objectives

So what’s coming next? Here are the top five goals.

First off, I’m continuing my commitment to gaining pistol proficiency. That means both my practice sessions as well as training and competition. My goal is competing in at least four competitions, with six being better. I also want to do at least one pistol-focused training course. A scan of upcoming Practiscore events looks like my main “games” will be Steel Challenge, PCSL pistol, and whatever outlaw matches come up at local clubs.

Second, 2025 is the year I lean down to my target body fat percentage. I’ve done two waves of fat loss over the last two years, going from 25% down to 17% overall at the lowest. I let it climb up again slightly to do some muscle building, and now I’m going to aim for 12%-ish. This should mean about 15-20 lbs of fat to lose. From there, the long term goal is to keep it in the 12%-ish to 15%-ish range for as long as I can.

Third, I want to work on my radio skills. That means getting my general ticket and starting to work the radio and develop that knowledge. The goal will be at least three parks on the air (POTA) activation sessions during the year, which also helps get a feeling for how to do “field ops” with high frequency radio.

Fourth, I’d like to expand my gunsmithing skillset. Up to this point, I’ve managed to do some moderate difficulty tasks like installing aftermarket springs, triggers, hammers, sears, strikers, and other small parts on some of my pistols. The most involved being the Beretta 92A1 and Ruger Mark IV. None of these tasks required fitting, sanding, filing, or other “permanent” modifications to complete. For 2025, the goal is going deeper into this side of the house by picking a project pistol and learning how to do “real work” on it. Most likely it will be a 9mm 1911 platform, suited to the Steel Challenge matches I mentioned under the first goal.

Lastly, the fifth goal is to finish the writing for the book I first mentioned a long time ago. I keep getting into fits and spurts where I make progress, then it goes on the back burner, then I come back to it and re-write portions of it. Now is the time to commit, before AI writes what I was going to say, anyway.

Of course, I’ll keep you updated on what I learn as I work through these goals.

Wrapping Up

It’s hard to believe that I’m still here and going after seven years since purchasing the domain. 11 years if you count way back to the beginning on the free WordPress site. Most bloggers I know who started around the same time have long sold their sites, moved on to something else, or just stopped posting. It seems the world largely moved past blogs and most people go to YouTube these days. And while I’m there and have a small presence, my first passion will always be writing here on the site.

Thanks for joining me along this path, and I look forward to sharing more as I learn and develop.