Looking Back on 2025

2025 is now over. I don't exactly know why, but I never, even the very last day of the year, could remember what year it was with certainty. That data point just never stuck, and I found myself, over and over again, annoyed that when I pulled down the top menu thing on my phone to check the date, it doesn't show the year too, and I wanted to remind myself of that, too.

Time felt a little slippery this year in a few ways, I guess. At one point I shared in my work chat about a silly mistake I'd made, and added a sarcastic "happy Monday". I didn't realize til later that it was not in fact literally Monday that day; my coworkers had assumed part of the joke was I already knew that. Not that time!

Being more present in the moment was something I tried to put effort into this year - not 100% of the time, but more and more, using principles from mindfulness meditation. Be in the moment with my family, phone down, focus on what's happening right in front of me and that time together rather than thinking grown-up thoughts about grown-up problems. I tried to remember at other times to pay more attention to the sensations I was feeling in my body as I did chores or waited on something, or to just to notice my breathing. I just started re-reading Nurture the Wow: Finding Spirituality in the Frustration, Boredom, Tears, Poop, Desperation, Wonder, and Radical Amazement of Parenting by Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg, which I first read when I was pregnant with our older kid. I'm happy to revisit the actual text, but mindfulness, quiet devotion, and wonder to get through the hard parts of parenting is something that has really stuck with me these past few years.

I started 2025 (here again, I pause - is it 2024 I mean to write? No, 2025.) with a new baby I had just birthed. The song "Hostages" by the Mountain Goats somehow became my anthem of the end of pregnancy; my wife and I listened to it in the car as a hype track on our way to the birthing centre and again, on the way home with the new baby the next morning. In labor I kept repeating to myself "I can do hard things". You know what? I was right.

Reflecting back on the year with my wife the other night, we discussed what moments or experiences brought each of us the most joy this year. My answer came immediately - any time we spent riding bikes as a family. Reading to my kids and being silly and playful with them is up there, too. The baby is now big enough to add his own silliness to the mix, and it's really something special.

I've seen people suggest that instead of a New Year's resolution, one might make a list of things they want more of in their life in the new year, and another list of things they want less of. More family bike rides goes to the top of a list right away; more books does, too. At first I wasn't a big fan of how toddlers (and now I can say, also preschoolers) often want to hear the same books over and over, even back to back in the same sitting. I don't mind it now though, though I do wish it was my turn to pick the book more often! Sometimes the repetition even feels meditative. Tonight we read The Giving Tree in French (L'arbre généreux) three times in a row. We read it first last night and this morning, my big kid told us we needed to go on a tree hunt, to find them a tree to love, and visit everyday. I have mixed feelings on The Giving Tree but still– shouldn't we all go out and look for a tree we can love?

I didn't do a lot of my own reading in 2025, and I'd like to do more in 2026. Between work, and parenting, and managing seemingly endless household tasks and paperwork, I often didn't feel like I had any spare cognitive capacity available this year for other pursuits. Outside of kids' books, I mostly read poetry. I didn't write much, and am hoping to soon do more of that, and more personal writing in general. In past years I've used a digital journaling app, but I'm going back to writing with pen and paper. I bought a paper planner too, for the first time in years. I want to anchor myself in my sense of time, slightly more zoomed out than just the current moment. Place, too- I know our neighbourhood well now and am building up my mental map of Ottawa, and I'm ready to zoom out a bit, and get more familiar with the the wider map of Ontario and Canada.

As far as blogging, I somewhat hastily moved my personal site from the custom-coded Eleventy project I've been cultivating for many years, to this new site using Ghost as a CMS. It's more like Wordpress, more batteries-included for blogging, and less like a hobby coder's playground. I'm more interested in the writing than the code right now, and I was especially seeking a way for people to comment on the things I write - I don't really post much on Facebook or Instagram these days, (and let's not even mention Twitter) and I miss the people I'd have interacted with if I was posting my hot takes and screeds there and if it was still many years ago, before Facebook and Instagram (and let's not mention Twitter) were quite so easily recognizable as what they've become today. If you're reading this, or any other post, and you feel like commenting, please do! I'd love to hear from you. If you don't feel like commenting, heck, send me a text, or an email, or drop me a note on Mastodon or however you usually would contact me.

If you're reading this, and you don't live in my house, there's a pretty good chance I miss you. The heartache of my missing you, and the heartache of all the reasons I have so many people to miss these days, casts a pretty big shadow over the last year.

The top of the list for "what should I do less of in 2026" is really easy, too: in 2026 I hope to not move houses. We moved in 2023, within Lincoln, then 2024 to Ottawa, then in 2025, we moved from the house we first rented here in Ottawa to one we purchased. It's in the same neighbourhood, really close by in fact, but that did not seem to save us all that much of the hassle and headache of moving.

We're making this place ours in a way that I've never really done with anywhere I've lived as an adult before, and it's a lot of fun. The inside of the front door is a vibrant cheery purple, and the living room has a bright green accent wall. Our bedroom walls are purple and my office walls are periwinkle. Big kid picked a forest green, with the promise of blue decorations so both favorite colors could be represented. The "neutral" walls are baby blue or this faint lavender that's just gorgeous in low light. While we were picking colors for the remaining rooms, the store clerk offered us an incredible deal on some paint they'd mixed in the wrong shade– so now the basement is floor-to-ceiling pepto-pink.

I'm taking on projects too that I'd never DIY'd before: I've never painted before, and painted most of the main floor before we moved in. (And eventually hired someone when it was clear finishing the rest of the painting in the gaps between work and kids and whatever else would never happen.) I've fixed a leaking faucet, and am planning to put up a tile backsplash in the kitchen when the onslaught of winter illness ends and I have more PTO banked back up to devote to it.

I've found local community this year most successfully in spaces where my kids are welcome to be part of it, too - play groups and family-oriented meetups or time hanging out at the neighbourhood park. I've taken small steps towards non-family-oriented community-building, but it's been slow going. There's a few factors that go into that; high among them is that the baby only just started sleeping through the night, so I've been exhausted, and has never really successfully taken a formula or pumped milk feed, so... I've been exhausted, and haven't been able to be gone for long solo this entire year. That wasn't really the plan or how I wanted it to work out, but it's what happened.

I can do hard things, indeed.

Happy New Year. May this year be not quite so hard, even though I am confident you too, can do hard things. May you find joy, on a bike or with your loved ones or in a community that makes you feel whole. May you find a tree to love and visit it every day. May we all sleep through the night.