2025 year end post

We did it! If you’re reading this post, you’ve made it to the end of 2025. Big year for the world (as is every year) but also big year for me personally. This will now be my fifth end of the year blog post where I reminisce about the good times with friends this year as well as look back at some of my goals.

I think the general theme for me this year was stabilizing. My life — though exhilarating and adventurous and daring last year — needed some kölm energy coming into 2025. Though a quick hiking trip through northern Italy did not help with that, I spent a solid three to four months without any major travel (I took the train to Boston lol). I’ve finally had the time to build up the habits and routines that I needed to “Get my life back on track.”

That was a little sarcastic, but also somewhat true. I had changed jobs last year and though it was a great move I needed to gain my footing and grind a little to get promoted (which I did!). I became more daring at work, taking on larger projects, more responsibilities and now I am leading a big project that I am happy to say is pushing me farther than before.

But work is not all I can say about this year. I have had a life outside of work! Trust me!

Yeah. I will say that work becoming a larger part of my life than ever before was not really the turnaround I had envisioned in the beginning of the year. I think next year will be about growing and balancing the various parts of my life — breaking out of the bubbles that I’m in mentally and physically.

I’ve been making some pushes already: this year I started hosting trivia games with my friends! I started with some humble Google Slides but have evolved it into a webui that lets me present to a TV and watch my friends struggle to identify US states! I’ve also started doing some volunteering with a local group to feed stray cats. I’ve gotten to explore my neighborhood a lot more (which I would not have done I think) and really feel like I’m settling in. I know neighbors, people who can help me or that I can help.

But let’s see what I’ve done this year for my hobbies! As always I will track the three major goals: exercise, photography and blogging.

blogging

goal: write more high quality content/ result: same shit, but 75 posts!

I am not really good at gauging the quality of writing. I will say that I think I have not been putting as much thought into my writing this year. I’ve mostly coasted off the systems I’ve built for content for this newsletter such as anonymous subscriber news and animal of the week. The one project I wanted to start was the hobby editions, where I’d talk about my friends’ hobbies.

This is how it is going:

So this year I will make the same empty promise: I will write the hobby edition this year. I will do mini profiles on my friends and their hobbies and side hustles. I will make it so people who subscribe to this newsletter know each other to some capacity. I will!!!!

But looking at the stats I might have just been writing about other things. I attempted to blog for a month straight, which ended up being more like five days straight. My travel blogging count took off as I started to write them with reckless abandon. I somehow became like that person who is posting every moment of their vacation on their story. Maybe I do not need to be doing that!

So next year. I think it’s time to turn to a slower pace of writing. I wonder if limiting the number of posts I write a year will help?

photography

goal: take more photos result: took a lot of photos. some very important

MY goal last year was extremely vague. I had mentioned that I took photos of a kung fu competition and had a lot of fun doing that, but did not write anything beyond that.

It has been a crazy year for photos, though.

I took pictures of my friends (esteemed subscribers Colleen McGuinness and Leo Liu) engagement. Like, their ENGAGEMENT. I was hiding and EVERYTHING. I also took photos of Colleen for her graduation! That was pretty fun as well. One thing I learned when you take photos of people that the person likes is that the photos start to make unexpected appearances. I opened an email for Colleen’s graduation party and got flash banged with a photo I had spent like 20-30 minutes figuring out the color balance for. When I was hanging out with Leo and Colleen at their apartment, I saw out of the corner of my eye a giant printout of a photo I had taken during their engagement that her brother had given them.

Previously when I was at home I had printed out my own work and hung it up around the house. Finally: other people were printing MY pictures out and using them for profile pictures and such. Feels good!!!!

But goals? I would hazard to say that this year was goals. I had the honor of taking important pictures for my friends. Took pics at my cousin’s violin recitals. What’s there not to like?

Well I’ve been taking less film photos than ever. I picked up a little bit at the end of the year but I spent a long portion of the year without any film photos. We will be changing that next year! Camera all the time! And also no color film. First because color film is expensive but also because … there’s something different about black and white. The lack of color really leaves it up to the subject of the photo to dictate the emotion, so you can’t make a sad looking scene look happy simply by changing the color balance. It’ll take a smile to make a happy picture, or maybe a fun guy drinking out of a coconut.

So my goal next year in explicit words: shoot all film in black and white. Learn more about and practice composition and lighting!

exercise

goal: bike 1000 miles result: i bought a bike! and biked 700 miles

I think one of the biggest surprises of my year was how much I’d be biking. I finally bit the bullet and picked up a bike from the local bike shop. Then, just started biking! I was going to just bike like 6 miles every few days and call it a day until one fateful day, I was coming back from a bike ride when my doorman said these words: “Back so soon?”

Yeah. That got me. The next time I went biking I decided to bike ten miles. Then came a 20 mile bike ride. My Saturday mornings became filled with two hours of biking, just me and my thoughts. These eventually culminated in a 50-mile day of biking to my uncle’s and back. Things were looking up. I was thinking about doing a hundred mile bike ride in the spring. I’d wear warm clothes, I’d gear up and I’d go for these awesome winter bike rides. Obviously I had never biked in the winter before. Back when I was home in California I wouldn’t even go for a ride if it was under 50 degrees!!!

So yeah. It’s been too cold to bike lately.

But just when it got too cold to bike I started tracking my macros (shoutout to esteemed subscribers Akshay Pawar, Leo Liu and Harish Bhaskar for getting me on Macrofactor!) and made a very expensive decision to start working out with a personal trainer. Yeah … it’s expensive. But I’ve made a lot of strides in my fitness that I don’t think I would have without.

It’s been a crazy year for fitness. Cooking for myself, painstakingly weighing every gram of food going into my body. Is it worth it? Is all this good for me? For anyone reading this? I’d say yes. You could say, I’ve finally got back on track for fitness.

Thanks everyone, for a wonderful year. To the old friends I’ve had for a long time and the new friends I’ve made this year, let’s have a great 2026. What goals do you guys have this year? Feel free to text me/email me. OR if you want to share with the rest of the esteemed subscribers, sound off in anonymous subscriber news!!!