2025 Reflections

See also: 2024 Reflections, inspired by: insom and manuel

Personal 💜

2025 was a largely uneventful year and that was a huge blessing after 2023 and 2024. To quote Milosz:

So that for a short moment there is no death

And time does not unreel like a skein of yarn

Thrown into an abyss.

Mila's constant presence and boundless energy was wonderful. We also made some home improvements, especially refinishing the floors, that have really made the house a cozier space to be in. There's a sense of calm with my approach towards middle age. I'll be 40 in August and I find myself gently curious about what I want to do with the time I have left. There's room for reinvention still.

I'm on a plane right now to Mexico City. Today is Norma and my 13 year anniversary. It's incredible to think that we've been together that long. It feels like yesterday that I was taking her on a date to H Harper Station, or chasing Jurgen around the backyard together while Seyla reclines in a pile of leaves. In another 13 years, I'll have spent as much of my life with Norma as without her and that's something I'm really looking forward to.

Work 💼

It was a busy year at Investnext but not overly stressful. We grew the engineering department from 5 to 11, adding a third squad. I was particularly pleased to hire some top-notch former Calendly folks. I still like my boss, Michael, who allows me a lot of autonomy and respectfully hears out my occasional rants.

I'm still struggling with what I want to do. Investnext is a good place to work but I find myself uncertain of how to add real value a lot of the time. I miss teaching or my team lead days on Flamingo where I both had more clarity on what was important and felt more connected to the work and the team.

Some of this is just difficulty being full remote and being a less technical manager than I was at Calendly. But there's also a declining interest in startups and software trends. I want to build something that lasts and more and more I struggle to believe that tech companies are anything but vehicles for financial arbitrage. That just doesn't interest me.

I miss teaching at The Iron Yard and Flatiron. Some of that is because my knowledge was useful though these days I'm probably far behind the trends. But more than that I appreciated the community building and the physical spaces that we brought life to.

Travel 🛫

• Santa Barbara in Feb for Valentine's Day
• Philly in March to see Tez
• Palm Springs and Santa Barbara in July
• NYC and Halifax in August
• Santa Fe, Philly, Santa Barbara, and Oakland in October
• Tiger, GA for New Years

There was a lot of travel this year. Too much, in fact. The October block in particular was just too dense. I spent more of that month out of town than at home, I'm pretty sure. But I am very glad I made an effort to go to Town Con 2025. I enjoy the community but I also love Nate a lot and it's worth it to have that face time.

Norma and I traveled to see the "gang of six" in California for Valentine's Day and then we all got together again in a cabin in the mountains for New Years. That chosen family is precious to us both and the time spent together is always great.

Music 🎧

As always there was lots of great music this year but there's a dedicated post for that.

Food and Drink 🍲

Not much to report here this year.

We're still going to Sosofed often. I do hope we start visiting Kimball House more regularly. I've been trying to take Norma on more date nights and Kimball House has always been our favorite spot but the frequency of our visits has waned in recent years.

Games 🎮

Silksong finally came out and I enjoyed sinking 100 hours into it. It didn't wind up charming me as much as the first game did and I have a little bit of a hard time nailing down why that is exactly.

I will say that I think the expansive world and adorable NPCs are fantastic. The Tool and Crest system is a deeper and more effective way to experiment with character builds than Charms were in the first game.

The boss fights felt more uneven to me but I might just not be remembering how much I struggled with Hollow Knight back when it first came out. The music didn't leave a strong impression this time around which is a sharp loss.

I finished Act 2 and got a bit into Act 3 but stalled out in Novemeber with other life stuff. I imagine I'll get back to it at some point but I don't feel much urgency. There is already a DLC expansion in progress that is supposed to release this year so I imagine it won't be too long.

Hacking 💻

There was a lot of good Collards hacking this year but not much else. The most notable improvements were support for markdown pages, an overhaul of the serve command, and incremental builds, plus some refactoring to make it easier to define custom collection types.

So my hacking mostly exists to support my writing and this website at present. I'm not too bothered by that in the end.

The one other hack of note was my interactive Record Library. I have had a lot of fun collecting vinyl the past few years so having a nice way to visualize, sort, and randomize it was a really fun project.

Habits ♲

The biggest change to my habits in 2025 was probably taking Mila to the dog park more regularly, working out more, and blogging more.

I picked up a personal trainer at the end of November so I expect there will be more exercise, maybe too much, in 2026. I really want to spend more time experimenting with music in 2026. Maybe it'll just be making mixtapes, maybe it'll be fiddling with Elektron boxes or bitwig. I don't really know but it feels like something I still need to explore.

Conclusion

2025 was a good year overall, a space to catch my breath after rough waters. I hope this year gives me more clarity on what I want to do career-wise. Beyond that, if I have lots of time with Norma and friends, it'll be a good year. Hopefully I'll squeeze some exercise and writing in as well. Cheers.