Year End: 2025
2025 was a stressful year.
The world, which has been inching closer to insanity for a good portion of my adult life, now seems to be moving in full strides. News and social media have pushed beyond satire into absurdism, the cyberpunk dystopia presented in books like Snow Crash has effectively been realized in the modern age of AI and literal "Megacorps", and quite honestly I don't see a way to dial it all back or divert the course of where humanity seems to be headed.
It has also been a stressful year at work. I have spent my career (~13 years now) doing web development and general problem-solving at a public university. It's a job I love, but due to some budget changes and restructuring I felt it was necessary to push a bit, which resulted in a daunting new job title, a new boss, and new team members. The transition, added responsibility, and visibility into the inner workings of the beast have left me somewhat breathless and exhausted. The requirements of the new role are often at odds with my natural un-seriousness and "open & free" philosophy, and as someone who tends towards workaholism, I worry that this new role will slowly erode a critical part of me.
Media-wise 2025 was an interesting shift. I played less games, read less books, and watched less shows, but the media I did consume felt impactful and important toward the end of the year. Reading Borges' Collected Fictions took a large chunk of time and resulted in a big mental shift for me, leading me to seek out more short-story-shaped content and literature instead of the beefy fantasy and scifi novels I'm accustomed to. I think this shift was already starting to happen, but I feel like I'm better positioned to pick out things that will keep me interested going forward (we shall see).
Normally I'd list out every book and game here, but I've added an archive page to the site for much easier access! My book and game of this year are easily Borges Collected Fictions and Expedition 33.
Output-wise 2025 has been excellent. In March I founded 0dd.company, a small amateur artist collective designed to match my own slow pace of production. We have 3 small galleries now, and I've been able to consistently work on bite-sized content in-between the larger 3-month project timelines. These projects aren't anything crazy like the game-dev and book-writing plans I slowly accumulate (and never make) in my head, but by focusing on smaller creative endeavors I'm getting more practice and actually making things instead of just thinking about them. Between my mastodon account, the 0dd.company, and this blog I'm happy with what I've put out this year.
I want 2026 to be a year of learning, making, and philosophy. I need to stay centered and not let work bleed into my personal time, and I want to wield that personal time effectively to learn and make interesting new things. I also need to not let the world going to shit get to me -- the world has always been going to shit, and it will continue to do so whether or not I stress out about it.
May 2026 see many curious new ideas and no major catastrophes.