2025 in review

2025 was a pretty rough year for me professionally, a difficult year personally, and a pretty terrible year politically for the nation. But still: it's good to revisit.

Professionally:

I started this year managing a team of around 10 individuals - mostly people I had worked with for years through a startup acquisition. After a massive investment and infusion of cash to the project - taking a small SaaS platform and ramping it up to serve enterprise customers - we grew the team to around 40 people by mid-summer (some full-time, some contract, some near-shore, some off-shore). It got off to a rocky start, which was not totally surprising given we were making some serious architectural changes at the same time we tried to onboard a quadrupled globally-distributed team.

By mid-fall, the company no longer saw a path to success (and also believed the ultimate vision we were building towards would not be viable in the AI-native World of Tomorrow™) and killed the whole endeavor. We're back now to a team of five, mostly operating the platform in a "keep the lights on" model for the foreseeable future. So it goes.

It was a pretty stressful affair - which I learned I don't manage particularly well - but there were a few upsides: I worked with some really smart people on some exciting projects and I learned a lot about team structuring and scaling up system architecture. I'm grateful that many people had enough confidence in me as a leader and the platform itself to invest in in the first place. Also, even the "reset" itself was a clarifying moment: I was relieved in many ways that I no longer had to feel so responsible for a team and platform I've helped to build for over a decade. With that weight jettisoned, I was able to think about what I wanted to do going forward and look for new opportunities. Luckily after some good conversations I found a good fit and will be starting in a new role here in February.

Personally:

Between my wife and I, we had four funerals this year (two cousins, one uncle, one grandmother). Three out of the four were pretty unexpected. Life is short and you never know when your time is up.

On some more positive notes:

Woodworking

I built one chair and got halfway through a second

Post and run lounge chair, built at The Woodworking School at Pine Croft

In progress stick chair.

Enrichment

Books

I read 33 books, a bit under my goal of 36 but not terrible given the circumstances. My top five (not really in an order):

1. There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension , by Hanif Abdurraqib

2. Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live , by Susan Morrison

3. Dengue Boy , by Michel Nieva

4. Hollywood's Last Golden Age , by Jonathan Kirshner

5. How Can I Help?: Saving Nature with Your Yard , by Douglas Tallamy

I also read the zeitgest books about Facebook (Careless People), Vulture Capitalism (Bad Company) and China (Breakneck), and those were good too.

Movies

I watched 50 movies - less than the 70 I hit the past two years, but honestly probably a healthier number. Mostly first-time watches. Top five:

1. Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999)

2. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)

3. To Live and Die in LA (1985)

4. Hard Boiled (1992)

5. One Battle After Another (2025)

(I did start recording things in Letterboxd this year)

Videogames

I'm not great at finishing games, and I don't track them like books/movies, so this is from memory. The only two games I think I actually finished this year were Warhammer 40K: Boltgun and Star Wars Dark Forces Remaster by Nightdive Studios. Both play perfectly on the Steam Deck. Dark Forces in particular was a great experience - my parents bought it for me for Christmas when I was 9 or 10 years old, and it completely blew me away (I had not played other FPS's to that point). Being able to revisit it on a handheld console decades later was a nostalgic blast - I hope Nightdive keeps doing what they're doing as long as they can.

Music

I saw some great concerts this year - REZN, Deafheaven, Phosphorescent, Conan, and seeing Blood Incantation for a third time on their phenomenal "ABSOLUTE ELSETOUR".

The two most memorable were definitely the SSSessanta tour (Primus, Puscifer, A Perfect Circle) and seeing Wardruna with Chelsea Wolfe opening. If you get a chance to see Wardruna, make it happen.

Fitness

I've continued seeing a weightlifting trainer once a week (since 2021 now). I hit one weightlifting goal for the year, which was to one-rep-max bench press 300 pounds. My previous max was 265, so this was a pretty big jump. This technically put me over another one of my goals - hitting the 1000 pound club (lift 1000 combined pounds between deadlift, squat, and bench press single reps). I've never tried the actual "competition" version of it, where you have to do all three within an hour. Also, crucially, for at least the Rogue version of it ( https://www.roguefitness.com/challenges/1000-lb-club ), the deadlift needs to be a traditional "knees inside arms" style, and I've only hit 350# doing more of a "sumo style" (knees outside arms). I've since switched and am slowly building back up in a more traditional version. It's a silly thing to care about, but I want that T-Shirt.

I've also continued playing recreational tennis once a week. I'm pretty comfortable in the 3.5+/- classes and it's fine if I stay there for awhile. I played in a competitive league a few summers ago and may try that again, but I'm pretty content letting this be an area I don't feel the ever-present _need to get better_ urge in.

Home Projects

When we moved into our house in 2022, the basement was sold as "finished" - which meant a drop-tile ceiling, faux ship-lap particle board walls from the 90s, and a gross red carpet put directly on the concrete floor, which sloped so severely to the center that you couldn't put any furniture by the walls for fear of them toppling over.

After getting all of that garbage out, we spent many thousands of dollars this year to 1) have an interior perimeter channel dug to a new sump pit 2) have the floor leveled via 90-some bags of concrete and 3) have the knob-and-tube wiring updated. We then painted all the block-work walls with a lime-wash paint, installed rubber tile flooring (having to cut a ton of pieces to fix the not-square room), and put some IKEA rugs and a couch & TV from Costco down there. It's not "finished", but it's a nice cozy hangout/workout space now.

Wrap Up

I didn't complete some of my goals this year, but I'm not going to judge myself too harshly. I made it through, I learned a lot, and I still have my a roof overhead, a stable job, my health and the health of my family to be thankful for.