2025 Retrospective

2025 was one hell of a year.

Tess

In mid-January, my wife an I adopted a 14 month old puppy named Tess. I say puppy loosely, because she still is a puppy, but doesn't look like it. She is absolutely adorable and has the sweetest temperament.

It was an adjustment for both us and her. It's been close to four years since we last had a dog, and Tess has a lot of puppy energy to burn. It has gotten both my wife and I up and active a little more. Barring bad weather, we end up taking her for 2-3 walks a day. She loves the outdoors and sometimes seems like a bloodhound with how much she loves sniffing around.

We were thankful we had a fenced in backyard for her to run around in, until we found out the hard way that she figured out she could jump the fence with a running start. That was a fun midnight adventure getting her back. We ended up extending the height of the fence to 6 feet so now she thankfully is confined, but still has space to run around. My father-in-law was awesome in helping us extend the height of the fence with a minimal price tag all things considered.

We've fallen in love with her and are glad to have welcomed her into our family.

Writing

I've written more this year than I have in the past. My goal was to write 100 blog posts this year and I just passed it with 101 posts for 2025. Not bad. I think I want to try to keep a Tuesday and Thursday posting schedule for 2026. I figure I'm not going to get a post out every Tuesday and Thursday, but it's a reasonable target.

As for longer form writing. I took a pause from the novella or novel I was writing for the last 2 years. I wasn't really liking where it was going and didn't know how to get it back to a place that I liked. I did build an outline for a new fantasy novel that I'm going to explore.

Writing is hard.

Guitar

I've been trying to play the guitar daily. I don't always succeed, but I think I've been getting better. I still struggle with barre chords, but I've added more songs to my repertoire. I feel kind of competent, though I know there's still a ways for me to go.

I've tried playing my electric some, but I think I need to find a repair shop. The sound cuts out depending on where the volume knob is. Might be a bad connection. It could also be something I look to YouTube for to see if there's a fix I can implement on my own.

Music

One thing I've been trying to do more of is to purchase music rather than just streaming. I've made a note to pay attention for Bandcamp Fridays to support artists even more. I haven't gotten as many vinyl records this year as I have in the past, but my digital collection is growing. My iPhone storage is starting to feel a little tight since I've been transferring the files to have on the device itself. And I have a 256GB iPhone.

I do wish vinyl records more often came with digital download cards like they used to. I love the sound of vinyl, but it'd be nice to have the albums to go as well.

Politics

Sigh. I wish I didn't even have to think about this, but 2025 had other plans for me. It's been disheartening to see the country dive into fascism & authoritarianism. It's been equally as hard to see the all the racism and bigotry that has always been simmering just beneath the surface rise to the forefront and be celebrated by this administration.

It's been incredibly disappointing that the Democrats not showing up. America needs a true opposition party to fight back against the fascist GOP and instead all we're getting are strongly worded letters. Very few of them seem to recognize the dangerous times we're living through and how we're very much on the edge of knife.

I'm just hoping America can last long enough to begin to undo all the damage Trump and his cronies are inflicting upon this country. It's going to take at least a generation. All the horrors, kleptocracy, blatant corruption, and more. I'd say maybe 2026 will be better, but I'd be lying.

Work

I've had a pretty good year at work. The Blazor project I was working on for almost all of 2024 finally went live in April. The project had plenty of challenges arise throughout its entire process, but I'm happy with how it turned out.

I ended up being brought onto another team and for the last quarter of the year or so. It had it's learning curve with both the business requirements and the code.

I'm looking forward to see what challenges await me in 2026. I know there might be some rewrites coming down the pike.

Aspirations

Complete 12 Video Games

I've ended up spending a lot of evenings on the guitar, writing, and working on side projects that this sort of took a back seat most of the year. I spent most of the year playing Expedition 33 with a lot of stoppages and pauses. It caused me to miss some of the story points unfortunately so I plan on re-playing it eventually. My backlog is fairly large so I'm not sure exactly when that will end up being.

I did play more often in November and December, completing Jedi Survivor and Far Cry 5. I also started Far Cry New Dawn since I was in the mood to continue the story. Maybe next year.

Read 45 Books

I blew through this goal. Between physical books, and having some audio books for walking Tess and exercising, I ended up reading 66 books this year.

Write 100 Blog Posts

I managed to just hit this goal, writing 101 blog posts this year.

Finish Sunroom

I did buy primer and found out how I'm going to handle the baseboard heaters, so there's that. But that's about the extent of what I did for the sunroom. So...not much.

Build USS Enterprise Refit Model

Nope, didn't even begin this.