Year In Review: 2025

Another post-COVID year gone into the void.

Writing / This Website

Okay, lets get this one out of the way first. This blog site has been up for about a year now and yet I didn’t really manage to write anything new in 2025. Forcing myself to write more was the primary motivation behind this site to begin with, and while I’ve had fun tinkering with the site here and there, I’ve really struggled to commit to writing anything substantial enough to actually post. I did manage to start some early drafts or notes for a bunch of different topics though, so I’m hoping I can commit to a regular writing cadence in 2026.

Video Games & Media

I found a bit of a groove this year with consistent late night gaming sessions, so I ended up going through considerably more games than I normally would. I had also decided earlier in the year that I’d try to be a bit more mindful and engaged with the games I was playing, so I ended up making a top 10 list and writing some brief reviews over on my Backloggd page which is something I hope to continue into the next year.

Here’s a list of the games I played to completion or spent considerable time with this year (I’ll add a * next to my favorites):

• Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves
• The First Berserker: Khazan
• Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 *
• Sonic Frontiers
• Elden Ring Nightreign *
• Death Stranding 2: On the Beach
• Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin
• Shinobi: Art of Vengeance *
• Ninja Gaiden Ragebound
• Hollow Knight Silksong *
• Blasphemous II
• Hades II *
• Ghost of Yotei
• Mega Man 11 *
• Sonic X Shadow Generations
• Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater *
• Castlevania Dominus Collection
• Silent Hill f *
• Call of Duty Black Ops 7 *

All in all, a good year for video games where I felt like I actually engaged with them more than I just consumed them.

As far as other media goes, nothing really stands out from this year. At some point in 2025 I canceled most of my streaming subscriptions, so I just haven’t really kept up with films or tv shows at all. Honestly, I don’t really miss it.

Books

I met my goal to read at least 12 books this year with a final total of 15, but I wasn’t particularly consistent throughout the year and could/should have gone through significantly more. Something to work on for next year.

Here’s what I read:

• Misquoting Muhammad - Jonathan A.C. Brown
• The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien (Reread)
• Blood, Sweat, and Pixels - Jason Schreier
• The Anxious Generation - Jonathan Haidt
• Mistborn 1-3 - Brandon Sanderson
• Fluent Forever - Gabriel Wyner
• How to Listen to Jazz - Ted Gioia
• Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro
• A Primer for Poets and Readers of Poetry - Gregory Orr
• Mort - Terry Pratchett
• The Best Poems of the English Language - Harold Bloom
• East of Eden - John Steinbeck
• Animal Farm - George Orwell

East of Eden stands out as a story that’ll stay with me for a while. Mort was my first Terry Pratchett book and while I don’t think the ending was particularly satisfying, I really enjoyed his style of writing and hope to pick up more books from his Discworld series next year. The most disappointing books on my list were probably the three Mistborn books by Brandon Sanderson, so despite his reputation as one of the most prolific fantasy authors of our time I doubt I’ll be picking up any of his other works.

Work / Career

I’ve struggled for years now with certain aspects of the tech industry that I seem to be at odds with, but this year I may have reached a bit of a breaking point. As the presence of “AI”/LLMs grew both in the world at large and specifically in my workplace this year, it started becoming clearer to me from the way it was being spoken about or sold that too much of the industry and the people in it have a very low or warped opinion of life and humanity in general. Conversations around LLMs and what they actually are/how they work versus public perception of them, LLMs and art/creativity, the offloading of basic thinking to LLMs, reliance on LLMs for personal/relationship/therapeutic advice, etc… have all started to drive me crazy in a similar way that the obvious scams of crypto/NFTs drove me crazy a few years ago.

There’s just a certain kind of shallowness to the industry and a large amount of the people in it that’s very clearly at odds with something at the core of my being, and this feels like the year where the weight of that might have just become too much for me to bear. 2025 finally made me realize that I may need a bit of a break from the tech industry and everything around it in order to seriously reflect on what I want to do and where I want to go next.

Personal

This felt like a big year for me when it comes to personal goals/growth. I’ve managed to build a fair number of healthy habits like running/walking daily, which have led to a sustained weight loss of close to 100 lbs and general improvement in both mental and physical health. Chronic issues with procrastination are finally being acknowledged and addressed which has led to noticeably lower levels of anxiety, and conscious efforts toward proper self reflection have actually led to greater clarity regarding my goals, values, flaws, and general priorities. I feel a lot more put together than I did at the end of 2024.

I’ve also been slowly but seriously picking up old hobbies like language learning again toward the end of the year and hope to continue into the next year along with building some new habits around more artistic endeavors like illustration, music, and photography.

There were a couple of notable personal failures this year too, like how I definitely failed at getting off my phone and being more present. I had brief periods of time where I successfully cut screentime throughout the year, but overall it was a complete failure. Also, a year of focusing on personal growth had me mostly looking inward for most of it instead of outward, which naturally meant I also had a bit of a lousy social life. Not nearly as bad as the years right after 2020 where I practically became a shut-in, but I had hoped for better this year.

Overall though, as the year comes to a close I think I’ve finally found some real meaningful momentum that I’m looking forward to riding into 2026.