Like the OP, I too caught the flying bug, and with the assistance of FlyerTalk, the many oracles both on-board and on the board (see what I did there), my status has just ticked over to gold as of this morning, my first time at the top tier (and naturally, any future CE trips have just been seat shifted to 1A where possible!)

I too would have normally stopped at Silver, but overshot it by a large margin and decided to keep going.

My problem now, is that I still have an ex-JER trip to MLA booked in February, plus the GIB 'DO' trip in March, and my TP count (1510) doesn't run out until July 2019 - Gold between 7th September and 11th December and all in Europe - and I'm having second thoughts whether to do a few trips next year to try for 2500 (620 points short)?

Only one trip booked after my year ends - the Sweden - Babybus trip (link here) - but early days yet.