Well, I certainly failed to write more here. I did write a complainy post about OCaml; I’m doing 2025 Advent of Code in Haskell and having a much better time. I did do 2-3 “meaty” posts on my work blog but didn’t really feel super compelled to port it over here. This space seems better than that.
Thinking about my hopes for 2025 in retrospect is sort of funny. This was a very adult year. My wife got cancer (stage 1, caught early, removed quickly). Work stress really ramped up in June and hasn’t really settled back down. I resumed therapy to try to get a handle on how I respond to that stress. I got myself active and lost 20 pounds between August and December just by walking through my neighborhood and listening to the birds. After all this, Maureen got pregnant again and we’ll be welcoming our second daughter into the family this May.
I accomplished my reading goal but not by much. My favorite books were The Secret History (of course), The Glory of the Empire (Byzantium reimagined), Hav (travelogue to an imaginary city), and Perdido Street Station. I lost a bit of steam on reading this year due to going through i18n Puzzles, Everybody Codes, Silksong, and Balatro. I replayed Final Fantasy 6 and was struck by how easy the game was. I had a lot of fun drafting some Magic the Gathering sets for a few months in there.
I didn’t spend that much more time in Rust (beyond more number theory hacking at the start of the year) but I did learn Zig well enough. I didn’t do much cross-stitch after February but I’ll get back into it doing the Christmas ornaments this year.
Work has been more intense lately but I can’t imagine a better job in the world for me than being a principal engineer. I get to keep driving change in our tech systems to better represent the needs of the business. I love 85% of the work and the other 15%, eh, I’ll muddle through it well enough.
In June, I was going to see Godspeed You! Black Emperor at a concern venue way out in the NC hinterlands. I navigated my way there through my Android phone. On getting there I found a long line to get into the venue; the band had arrived late and the concert that was supposed to start at 8pm had just unloaded the instruments. I already had expected to do 1-2 hours of work after getting back from the concert (working for an Australian company sometimes forces work into odd corners of your life). Then my phone died and kicked me to an error screen on reboot. The idea of waiting an extra 3 hours for the concert and then trying to find my way back in the dark sans phone only to have to sign back into work seemed impossible. So I made the adult choice and used the last few hours of daylight to get back home and do what I had to. Both at the time and looking back it felt like the end of an era.
Looking forward to 2026, I want my family to stay healthy, our new daughter to arrive safely, and to keep my head on straight without it spinning off. For the first time in my life, I feel like I understand how difficult these things are, how little control I have over the details, and how lucky I am to be in this particular time and place.