2025 in review

Happy new year! 2025 certainly was a year, if not several. Here are some things that happened, sorted by month.

January was generally rough in the realms of mental and physical health. 

• Went to Cascada on New Year's Day, and I inadvertently set the tone ("lol...oops") for the year by drinking out of a candle.
• My car filled with water and smelled like an aquarium and I had to replace all of the carpets. Fellow Subaru Crosstrek-havers: be sure to clean the drains in the cowl beneath your windshield!
• I tried my third CGRP preventive for migraine and it slam dunked my brain right into the toilet.
• At the end of the month, I switched to part time at work to try to figure out how to manage a chronic illness while still being a human guy.

February saw the return of the plants and a few smaller adventures.

• Returned to the Bonneville Dam, this time the visitor's center to the north on the Washington shore. This is maybe the coolest museum experience around Portland and is a treasure trove/time capsule of really beautiful environmental and graphic design.
• I gave a talk at work about a thing that I built for the Annie E. Casey Foundation that uses Google's Text to Speech API to convert blog post content into audio files. I really enjoy giving talks!
• Got to go in the cab of my beloved Southern Pacific 4449, and the sweet volunteer inside was clearly just thrilled to have adults to talk to and spent nearly 45 minutes explaining how things worked. 

In March, spring arrived in full force.

• Went to the National Neon Sign Museum in The Dalles which is such a treat! The owner is so knowledgeable and so excited about neon and the collection is small but mighty.
• My best friend and I started attending the Under The Redwoods seminars put on by the Sempervirens Fund. Redwoods are so amazing, and after one of these my brain always feels all sparkly.
• Went to see the cherry blossoms on the waterfront along with everyone else in Portland.

In April the flowers were totally going nuts, and I was still trying to find a way to balance chronic illness and work.

• Did the annual pilgrimage to the Memaloose Hills to look at the wildflowers and go: holy shit.
• Started ADHD meds (again); felt a way about it, mostly pertaining to labor under capitalism.
• Went and saw Princess Mononoke in 4K at the Hollywood Theatre and cried through most of it, starting with the absolute first note of the theme at the beginning.

All of my photos from May are of flowers and rainbows.

• Went to National Train Day at the ORHC, where there were a lot of sounds.
• The horse chestnuts all bloomed and it made me think about Berlin a lot.
• Was on the computer too much.

In June, my body was in okay enough shape to make the decision to go back to work full time again starting in July, so I tried to relish the relative freedom of part time work.

• Took a class at PCC about World's Fairs generally but that was largely grounded in Portland's 1905 Lewis and Clark Exposition. The last class was an immersive walking tour through NW industrial, including custom stereoscopic viewfinders. It was so cool.
• Took a trip to Coo's Bay to look at the ocean and drink root beer out of a big boot.
• Saw Perfume Genius at Revolution Hall and cried and cried and cried.
• Tripped on an apple and sprained my ankle, extremely Richard Scarry type injury.

July was tumultuous as hell, but I went back to work full time on the 7th, with the project being divesting my sense of self from my day job (spoiler: this is an ongoing endeavor but has been largely successful).

• I got my first tattoo from Lucy Zhang, who was guesting at Bad Apple Tattoo in Seattle! I had wanted this one for years but figured I'd never get the chance as Lucy is from and works in Australia, so I lost it when I saw they'd be close to Portland and snagged the first spot. I truly love it so much. 😭
• Gave another talk at work, this time about a Vue application that I built for AECF that supports organizations working to transform youth justice. It is nice to have my work not be evil!!!
• Picked blueberries and watched container ships go by on Sauvie Island, and then later made blueberry lemon jam.
• Started (but did not finish) an intro to stargazing class at PCC taught by maybe the world's biggest nerd (complimentary).

I went through a breakup in early August that was intense, but I made it through.

• Saw Jamie XX in Pioneer Square and danced and cried in equal amounts.
• June turned 10! This does not make much sense because she is just a baby???
• Picked peaches by Mt Hood and ate the best peach of my entire LIFE.
• Lots of rearranging, cleaning, and then journaling and resetting in the redwoods.

In September I was getting into the swing of working full time, finally.

• Went to a work retreat in Atlanta and confirmed that my coworkers have corporeal forms. I spent most of my time by the pool attempting to hydrate the cats that lived at the resort and zooming around on a golf cart with a coworker from Portland who has the same complain-about-zoning energy that I have, thank gosh.
• I saw Joshua Bell play Saint-Saëns at the Oregon Symphony on an extremely hot day, and I had a lot of violin feelings in public.
• I effectively became some weird hybrid of tech/design lead on a project, which meant a lot of battling Figma and Zoom calls and working very, very quickly, mostly solo.
• I graduated to biweekly therapy after 3 years with my therapist weekly, plus like 4 years with my previous therapist. Boy howdy have I made a ton of progress!!

In October I was mostly working my ass off but also dancing a lot and getting back into making things!

• Started coworking in coffee shops with some local coworkers which makes me feel 1000% more like a real person with a job that isn't made up.
• I got another tattoo, this time from Emily Kaul! Getting one tattoo is extremely like wow, I hope this doesn't awaken anything in me, sure would be a shame if I got 12 more of these!!! I love this one too and am going for a touch up in January to get more color density.
• I sewed something for the first time in years, a Seamwork Tacara. I made it a bit too short so it sort of has toddler romper vibes. It's deadstock brushed fleece so it can just be my indoors winter romper to avoid regularly showing the world my entire ass.
• June hurt her leg while Tokyo drifting around the apartment and a dramatic trip to the emergency vet revealed that she has cat arthritis (she's being treated for it now which has only made her average speeds increase).
• I moved from dancing only at home to Dance Church, which has been a revelation. Charlie has the best playlists in Portland imo.

November was mostly a Zoom call, I think? Work was unrelenting and stressful. But!

• I got a fancy keyboard again (made even better by Britt hooking me up with her favorite switches, which may also be my favorite).
• For Thanksgiving I went to a friend's house and made The Tart I Love To Hate Making, but the real star was Demi's Pumpkin Pie holy moly.
• Traditional November game hole, this time for another round of Plan B Terraform now that it is in alpha. I swear the game play loop in this is like the resonant frequency of my brain waves, if that makes any sense at all.

December is a month that I am traditionally nervous about, because it's back to back anniversaries of unpleasant things for me, but I had maybe the best holiday break of my adult life? Which took an immense amount of work over many years to achieve, and I am very proud of myself! ⭐️

• My best friend visited and I was so grateful to have her here, even if I was mostly working. After 21 years of friendship all we need is to be (giggling) on the same couch.
• For my birthday we ate a lot of good food and then got zooted out of our goddamn minds and walked over to Hopscotch, which was, just as everyone told us it would be: fine. You can go there once, or not! It is unexpectedly humid inside which is probably a bug and not a feature!
• I had a slow and gentle Christmas, with homemade cinnamon buns and Lord of the Rings, plus a long, sunny afternoon walk to peek at all the camellias just waking up.
• The crows are back in town and I have rekindled my long friendship with them, mostly due to having a very large peanut budget.

Okay, that's that!

I don't do resolutions but I have been choosing a word these past few years. My word for 2025 was "consistency", and I am able to see the ways in which I did practice (and was rewarded for) consistency in the past year. My tentative word for 2026 is "awake". "Becoming" and "care" are also on the shortlist, but "awake" is in the lead. What does it mean? I don't know, ask me next year.

Very loosely following the tradition of the Rauhnächte, on the solstice my best friend and I each wrote thirteen wishes for the next year on pieces of paper and then folded them. We've each been burning a random one (without reading it!) every night since the 21st. The idea is that the twelve burned wishes will be fulfilled by the universe, month by month in the (unknown, to us) order of their burning. The wish that remains after twelve are burned is the one that is your responsibility, and tonight after burning my twelfth piece of paper, I was left with this wish: 

"I have a structured, fulfilling, and expansive creative practice".

I've wanted this for years, but haven't quite known how to make it happen, or what I want it to look like. This post represents my first step towards this, and this is the space where I'm going to explore what this means in 2026. Okay, let's goooo.