2025 was… a year. And I made it to the end of that year. If you’re reading this, I imagine you did too and let’s celebrate that. But also not one without loss; of loved ones, of health, of relationships, of jobs, of liberties, of pursuits of happiness. Let’s mourn those.

My year was mundane by most accounts. I worked, I family’d, and with the remaining life force I focused on myself. A couple failed side projects and half-baked game ideas in there but welcomingly “unproductive” relative to what I normally subject myself to. On a handful of fronts this year has been about scaling back in what I burden myself with, in material posessions, in finances, in obligations, and elsewhere. Ideally, I can clear the plate of duties that demand my limited attention. To be so bored that I read a magazine.

Resolutions resolved

I set some slightly different goals last year. Let’s check on last year’s goals:

  • 🟢 Seize work opportunities - I’ll call this a success. Released a design system and token system. An executive-level mandate caused us to pivot the entire design language using the tokens. Success. Other big products are beginning to use our team’s work, we’re recognized for the accessibility of our product… which is great.
  • 🔴 Hunker down and be creative - In the interest of binaries, I’ll say no. I think I gravitated to work and mind-numbing recovery, not creativity. I wasn’t very productive beyond work and family life. I think given “the situation” in the homeland, that’s okay.
  • 🟠 Slow down to 1x mode - I still watch and listen way too much in 2x but at a certain point it does feel natural. Certain content gets the 1x treatment, but not enough. I did slow down though, generally speaking. Less books, less blog posts, less side projects. And that’s okay.
  • 🔴 Join a club - I made attempts to join two different writing clubs, but it didn’t work out. One met on an inconvenient night and I guess I failed the application for the other one. I joined a Discord for a Gunpla group… but never went. Closest I got to joining a club is a dad band that plays after our kids’ band practices.
  • 🟢 Understand myself - I’m progressing on my health journey to untangle the knot of anxiety, weight, and ADHD. I’ve done all the important appointments and follow-ups. I’ve done the diet. I’ve done the exercise. I’ve got new medications all lined up. Waiting for something to change.

A month-by-month breakdown

  • Jan
    • New pain meds
    • New ADHD meds
  • Feb
    • Launched internal design system
    • Shipped cross-product/platform token system
  • Mar
    • Landscaping project
    • Trip to Arizona
    • Renaissance Faire
  • Apr
    • Cheer competition in New Orleans
    • New car
    • 45th Birthday
  • May
    • New ADHD meds
  • Jun
    • Trip to Grand Canyon
  • Jul
    • Shipped design system redesign
    • Trip to San Diego
  • Aug
    • Back to school
  • Sept
    • Volunteered at Austin-Oita 夏祭り
    • New BP meds
  • Oct
    • Trip to Santa Barbara
  • Nov
    • The Beths
    • Rainer Maria and Cap’n Jazz
    • Launched Grid-Paper
  • Dec
    • New BP meds
    • New GLP-1 meds
    • Christmas in Nebraska

The school rush and kid activities fill most non-working hours. It’s a lot of work right now but we signed up for it by having children. Speaking of children, my daughter’s cheer team won a national championship, which is an incredible accomplishment and experience for her. And my son started playing guitar this year which makes the whole family happy. Both kids are 10+ now which feels like we’re entering a new era in parenting; more autonomy, different problems, deeper conversations, movies with curse words, and more attitude. It’s new territory.

An average amount of books

I had a sub-goal of reading less this year and I succeeded! That feels good.

A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear It's Only Drowning Control Freak Slow Down Fight Oligarchy At Home Extra Focus Separation of Church and Hate H.P. Lovecraft's The Call of Cthulhu Sapiens Failure Is Not an Option The AI Con The Dawn of Everything Win Every Argument Moral Ambition Dungeon Crawler Carl A Different Kind of Power ADHD and Us Red Plenty Space Battleship Yamato The Wrong Stuff Who is Government? Mediations for Mortals Abundance Poverty, by America Careless People System Collapse Twilight of the Elites The Sirens' Call Fugitive Telemetry Exhalation The Startup of You The Customer Is Always Wrong Disrupting the Game The Power of Habit Super Mario Feel Good Productivity Being Wrong Network Effect

I encountered a lot of mediocre books this year but there were some bangers in there like The Dawn of Everything, The Wrong Stuff, and The Sirens’ Call. It’s possible I’ve maxed out on books though. My appetite to seek out new books to read in the last two months has been super low. They’re all starting to blur into a large mush. I have a backlog of manga to read… perhaps next year is the year I get back into comics?

An average amount of blogging

I published 53 posts in 2025 which averages to a post-a-week, but there’s some hot streaks in there skewing the stats. It’s less than the year before which (again) I’ll count as a win. Behind the scenes there’s dozens of half-finished posts, but it takes so much effort to finish a technical post about CSS or web components who knows when those will see the light of day.

Here’s a smattering of posts that either made the rounds or I’m proud of:

I’m sure I left something out but no need to overthink it. You can peruse the archive if you want.

Living in the zone of shit

American politics drove a lot of my daily vibes this year. Day-after-day of bullshit executive orders, tariffs, lies, DOGE, fuckups, coverups, corruption, kidnappings, gulags, military occupation of democratic US cities under false pretenses, murders at sea, billionaires, institutional collapse, and everything else is exhausting. The economic anxiety weighed heavily on me; we even panic bought a car! But watching groceries get more expensive, budgets get tighter, all while the President and his cronies launch crypto grifts to launder money from billionaires and foreign governments in an open influence peddling scheme is infuriating.

I had to step back from news a bit for my own mental health, but also it’s getting repetitive. Regime does stupid/illegal thing, PERSON gets DESTROYED by THING (but never does), consequences never happen, the world is unjust. I know the strategy is to exhaust, but I hit peak outrage years ago and this feels like a long, unshakable hangover of bad decisions. My trust in any form of government erodes like sand cliffs.

Mix in a highly speculative tech hype cycle which makes up a disproportionate amount of the economy and stock market valuation… and it’s hard to shake off a sense of dread.

Focusing on my physical and mental health

All my extra spoons went to wrangling my physical and mental health. Sometimes that manifested as staring at an iPad on my recliner after long day at work, but it also involved a lot of doctors visits. This has been a year and a half long journey (since good healthcare kicked in) of prioritizing myself. And while the news isn’t all great, I’m getting a clearer picture of the brain and body I’m dealing with. There’s a long road ahead and I don’t actually know when/if it gets better, but having a pathway forward means a lot right now.

I was unconsolably grumpy for nearly two months straight. It could be burnout. It could be cheese-moving. It could be depression manifesting differently. What I learned from going through that spell was good people and great music are the secret to being happy. At least for me. And I need to make sure I’m building that into the regular rhythms of my life.

2026: No New Projects

Next year has the potential to be good. If a certain elderly statesman, for example, passed away from age-related illnesses… that might change the mood considerably. But speaking to what’s within my sphere of control, I think there’s capacity for goodness.

For 2026, I’m adopting a mantra of “No new projects.” There will be new projects of course; they fit all the interest, novelty, challenge, urgency, and passion (INCUP) requirements that motivate ADHD brains. The spirit of “No new projects” is to finish more projects than I start. In the last month or so I’ve been aggressive on closing out old lingering to-dos; home improvements, organizing, taxes, managing devices, etc. and I want to continue that work of clearing out all those nagging unfinished bits. I want to buy back precious Brain RAM so I feel less overwhelmed all the time.

“No new projects” helps me be more present and realize when I’m creating work for myself. When I buy a new device, or an instrument, or think about building my own home server array… “No new projects” puts a hurdle in the way of that decision so that I don’t DDoS myself with a backlog of small jobs pursuing an impulse.

I tend to externalize, but 2026 also feels highly dependent on what happens in tech in the next year. A change in my job? A robot taking my job? A mass layoff? A bubble bursting? An industry collapse? A retreat to a smaller web? A new and unexpected technological breakthrough? As I hinted earlier, it feels like the entirety of tech has hitched itself to a highly speculative bet and we all have to wait and see what happens. The lack of clarity and concrete vision for the future of human-centered computing and labor creates a feeling of insecurity for me. A trillion dollar hurricane. Displacement.

But we can write. And we can dream. And we can imagine a future where humans connect.