My 2025 in review

Up: My years in review

What did I achieve?

• The biggest change is landing a new job.

  Getting a new job has unfortunately been a yearly-ish recurrence, but I’m hoping that this new job lasts for a while. Three years at a minimum.

  I spent a considerable amount of time unemployed this year (five months). I am glad that I really took the time to find a job that I resonated with, rather than jump to the first employment opportunity that came along. My get-me-a-job page and my CV have gotten an overhaul that required quite some introspection: answering the questions “what am I good at” and “what do I want to do longer-term” were difficult but necessary questions to answer. I think I did a good job marketing myself in the end.

• I continued to dedicate time and effort to my acting skills, and had my first proper performance. It sold out. I am rather happy with what I achieved. A small step, perhaps, but certainly significant. I like to think that I’m only getting started.

• I have completed another year of week­notes. It is fun and rewarding.

• This year, I’ve had more than one breakthrough in psychotherapy. The details I’m keeping to myself for now, in part because they’re rather private, but also because I haven’t figured out how to talk about them just yet.

• In other, more physical health news, I’m glad I finally figured out the source of my extraordinarily painful zapping headache: a nerve issue which is consistently eliminated through specific neck massage. No specialist managed to get me a diagnosis.

In the world of tech:

• I’ve upped my input devices game. I bought the ZSA Moonlander and love it (even though it took me quite a while to adjust to it). I also switched from a mouse to a trackball, and that also has been a great decision.

  I’ve been slowly making my way through the Tarmak keyboard layouts — currently at Tarmak-3 — towards adopting Colemak. It’s early to tell, but the change has increased my comfort. Or decreased my discomfort, perhaps rather.

• I’ve been relocating my open-source projects from GitHub to Codeberg. It feels like the right thing to do.

• I started learning Zig and fell in love with the language. I got proficient enough that parts of my web site are now built with Zig.

I’ve had quite a few active software projects this year:

• I’ve been actively using TomatenMark (integrated nicely with Scrivener) and rewrote its implementation from Ruby into Zig.

• I created Deniki, my personal wiki application, and even though I don’t use it that much because it has such a niche use case, I am still proud of it.

• ddenv has grown into a tool I love and use, even at my new job. I’m happy with the introductory ddenv video on YouTube, as well as its microsite.

• I wrote dflag out of spite. I’m not sure how I feel about that.

• I created ddwww which also fits nicely in my workflows.

• I celebrated Nanoc’s 18th birthday! I’ve continued to support and enhance it, like with TOML frontmatter support and improved performance.

• My solitaire game has received some updates, and it still fun to play.

• I learnt a lot from building Deng, even though I haven’t put it to practical use yet. That was going to be part of my next-generation static-site generator, but that project is (predictably) a gargantuan effort.

Where did I fall short?

In no particular order:

• Health-wise, I feel like this year hasn’t been great. I fell sick twice with flu-like symptoms, though I steered clear of COVID-19.

• My sleep has gotten worse. I even started sleepwalking at some point, though that luckily did not last long.

• I’ve not manages to publish any new articles, and the writing an interpreter book is abandoned. At least I have good-enough reasons for it; there is no point in pushing through if the end result isn’t up to the standard I set out.

• My fiction writing has taken a back seat. I still like it and feel driven to continue, but none of my output feels any good. The Alphabet Superset has stalled entirely. I also stopped attending the Shut Up & Write gatherings.

• The awful traffic situation in Berlin really got to me this year. I’ve been struggling to deal with it. This is a big reason why I stopped attending Shut Up & Write.

• I wrote an initial implementation of Deng, but have not put it to use yet.

What else happened this year? What else did I do?

In no particular order:

• I got laid off. Being laid off sucks. This is the first time it happened to me, and I did not expect it to be so emotionally taxing.

• I celebrated the life and work of David Lynch by rewatching a bunch of his films. The world is no longer the same without his voice.

• I started playing a table-top RPG (Blades in the Dark). Our sessions are not as regular as I had hoped, but deeply enjoyable nonetheless.

• I bought Doppler as a new music player for macOS, but ended up switching back to iTunes Music.app anyway.

• I bought a robot vacuum/mop, and I am so happy with it.

What entertainment did I enjoy most this year?

Picking the “best” piece of entertainment is always going to be a challenge. This is a purely subjective selection, of course.

Book: The Haunting of Hill House¹¹1 Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House (New York, N.Y: Penguin, 1984). 

Film: I Saw The TV Glow²²2 I Saw the TV Glow, written and directed by Jane Schoenbrun (A24, Fruit Tree, Smudge Films, 2024). 

TV: Twin Peaks³³3 Twin Peaks, written by David Lynch and Mark Frost (Lynch/Frost Productions, Propaganda Films, Spelling Entertainment, 1990).  — all of it.

Game: Outer Wilds⁴⁴4 Outer Wilds (Mobius Digital, 2019), published by Annapurna Interactive. 

What am I looking forward to in 2026?

In no particular order:

• I’d like to continue putting time into my creative passions (acting and fiction writing, mostly), figuring out what I am most drawn to, and improving my skills.

• I am looking forward to settling in my new job, establishing this career, doing good and meaningful work on a product that I use and love.

• I’d like to continue working on my hobby software projects, on my own time, doing interesting work without feeling the social pressure to achieve anything or to provide support.

• Perhaps I’ll pick up photography again.

• I am hoping to relocate to London in 2026. I think it’d be a great change for me.