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If I were a college football team, I think a sportscaster would kindly refer to 2025 as a rebuilding year. It hasn’t been my favorite, which seems to be a theme among many people I know, but I am still kicking it and I have moved some things in a positive direction so I guess it’s not too bad? Could be worse? As a friend I have lost touch with used to say with great regularity: it can always be worse.

So there’s that.

I feel like most of the recapping I would do in this year in review I have already done, so I’m not going to repeat myself too much, but here are some things I guess I’ll mention.

Art

Last year at this time I thought I was going to write more in 2025 and here we are at the end of the year again and I didn’t write more. I had a really interesting idea that I am not going to tell you about here in case I ever do anything with it (likelihood is low) for a dystopian sci-fi but I had a hard time motivating myself to expand on it because when I read the news I feel like I’m already in a dystopian sci-fi.

I did a couple of plays, which I am pretty sure I already mentioned in an earlier post this year, and though people ask me regularly if I am going to be in any plays (which is a cool thing for people to ask, genuinely), I was not. Maybe next year? I don’t know; if it works out with my schedule and isn’t a musical and what I look and sound like meshes with what director(s) have in mind then sure. It would be nice. I (almost) always have a good time.

But instead of theater or writing this year I had a pretty good year as a photographer. I always hesitate to call myself a photographer, because ha ha no I’m not, but I guess if people buy your photos then it counts. I entered a photo contest and didn’t win but I did place. And I had a couple of booths at art shows, and sold enough stuff at both of them to have covered my expenses and turn a small profit. I will have some photographs available at a retail store soon — I’ll put up a link when that’s a done deal — and I’ll be selling (or at least posting for sale) prints on this site as well.

The featured image on this post is from a chilly night in mid-November when the northern lights made an appearance here in Michigan. I took A LOT of photos that night but this one is by far my favorite. The lights aren’t always very visible here — it’s not like when I see videos of people watching them in the far north where they’re plainly visible to the naked eye — more like… blurry kind of odd-colored clouds. But this night the motion was clearly visible and though the camera always sees more than I can and picked up much more color and detail, it was probably the best show I’ve personally witnessed thus far, and was a beautiful night. Very still. Very peaceful. Someday I hope to make it way way way up north and see them put on a show up there, but for now I am happy that at least they drop in from time to time down here in Michigan.

I am not much into resolutions but I would like to get out and take more photos at night, northern lights or no.

Online life

This year I went from being chronically online to… not. I kinda Homered my way into the bushes and you can’t make me come out. I haven’t deleted my Facebook account, but I mostly only keep it to check if anything is going on locally. I am annoyed that Facebook kinda took over as the local information hub and now places don’t share information elsewhere. And so I go there and check to see if there’s anything going on that I am interested in, and then I might scroll for a couple of minutes, but I am mostly not there anymore.

Sorry I probably missed your birthday.

There was a time when being there was fun, and I still occasionally see things that are fun — people’s photos of their actual lives, for instance — but so much of it is politics memes. And I have a lot of thoughts about politics and I talk about politics a lot in my daily life, but I am going to be honest that I am never going to change my mind about anything because of a meme and neither is anyone else. But maybe we’re not trying to change anyone’s minds, maybe it’s just a very 2025 way to say hey to our echo chambers?

But being in an echo chamber is, well. I’m not here to tell anyone how to live their lives, and I have no influence even if I were, but I can’t think of anywhere that’s worse to be than an echo chamber. Double that for an echo chamber that generates revenue for Zuckerberg.

Books

I almost never look at my Goodreads* year in review (Goodreads Wrapped?) because I am usually a disappointment and don’t read as much as I think I should, but this year since I have been looking for ways not to look at social media I have definitely read a lot more.

I just noticed that my Goodreads profile picture is from 2010, only because it was several haircuts ago.

Here is the full list:

Women’s Hotel – Daniel M. Lavery | Intermezzo – Sally Rooney | James – Percival Everett | Irish Bookshop Murder – Lucy Connelly | The Perfect Marriage – Jeneva Rose | Listen for the Lie – Amy Tintera | The Thirteenth Tale – Diane Setterfield | The Guest List – Lucy Foley | A Quantum Love Story – Mike Chen | Funny Story – Emily Henry | The Quiche of Death – M.C. Beaton | The Mystery of Mrs. Christie – Marie Benedict | Pachinko – Min Jin Lee | Great Big Beautiful Life – Emily Henry | The Hunting Party – Lucy Foley | The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi – Wright Thompson | The Vaster Wilds – Lauren Groff | The Woman in the Library – Sulari Gentill | The Murder on the Links – Agatha Christie | The Dream Hotel – Laila Lalami | The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie – Alan Bradley | A Most Agreeable Murder – Julia Seales | The Monsters We Defy – Leslye Penelope | Buckeye – Patrick Ryan | The Maid – Nita Prose

My favorites were Intermezzo, James, Pachinko, The Dream Hotel, and Buckeye. The Vaster Wilds would’ve been up there because hot damn Lauren Groff can write, but good lord there were so many descriptions of shit that… ok we got it she probably shouldn’t have eaten those berries but I don’t need to know every time it’s hot liquid, you know? My least favorite was The Perfect Marriage which at some point was pretty much a hate read. Everything else was at — for me — varying levels of alright, from pretty good to at-least-it’s-not-Trump-tweets.

Anyway, if social media makes you feel insane, I can’t recommend books enough.

*Anybody on Storygraph?

The soft animal

I am wrapping this up with a poem that is, well, there’s never a wrong time for this one, but it always feels extra important as a reminder during the “New Year, New Me!” discourse about to drop on us like a mirrored ball in Times Square.

Wild Geese, Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.