2025, in review

The sun setting over Coney Island

Dear readers, it is time to reflect upon another successful revolution around the sun! I’m writing to you from Mexico City, fresh off of visiting family in Puebla and spending some time with friends in Oaxaca. While the holidays and their associated travel have been hectic, things have finally slowed down enough for me to sit and reflect on the past years.

My 2025 was largely defined by a resettling into Brooklyn after my time in Munich ended at the end of 2024. In many ways this has been a return to the familiar: I still live off of the train I always have. I was fortunate enough to slip back into the job I had before I left for Germany. I’m walking on streets that I can comfortably call my home.

Yet what’s surprised me is how, even with all this familiarity, my New York experience is very different than before. Both the city and I have changed pretty dramatically. I find myself spending more time on the waters off of Sheepshead Bay than I do at bars in Manhattan. I’ve completed a number of 10+ mile walks through Queens and Brooklyn, discovering new neighborhoods, foods, and making new friends. In my past New Yorkian experience I was frequently stressed by the cramped and chaotic nature of the city. Yet now having experienced what a calm and tranquil city is like, I’m much more appreciative of the excitement and color New York’s shenanigans brings to my life.

A year after moving back I can still mostly say I’m happy to be home. You can take a guess as to why I say mostly. The chaos of the current moment is stressful and takes a toll on my mental health, even if I’m one of the lucky ones that has managed to continue to eek out a normal life. I try to focus on the things I can control and tune out those things I can’t, but everyone reading this knows it’s something easier said than done.

Through it all, I still stand by what I wrote in 2024, in review:

Perhaps this is obvious to most but I learned that being close to my friends, family, and communities outweighed the benefits of living in a place with a higher quality of life. Germany had so many of the things I thought I valued: great trains, ample paid time off, bike lanes aplenty, good health insurance, low crime, easy access to nature, seemingly infinite destinations to explore, etc. Even with all of these positives, I found it difficult to enjoy them knowing that my loved ones were an ocean away.

This point was really driven home when my partner and I got married this year. We threw the wedding of our dreams in a beautiful place, giving us the opportunity to get many of our friends and family into the same place. The highlight of my 2025 was panning across the room during the reception and seeing all of those faces together in one place. It was a moment of realization of how lucky we are to have so many people in our lives that care about us.

A view from our wedding venue.

I’m feeling mixed. I’m of the mindset that the macro environment will get harder before things get easier. Yet in the micro environment that I actually experience, I’m feeling optimistic.

Some things I’m looking forward to, or otherwise on my mind for the upcoming year:

• Getting back on the water in the Spring and continuing to develop my skills as a sailor.
• Improving my cooking skills and exploring ways to use it to bring together friends and family.
• I’m naively optimistic that the wrath of technology-that-shall-not-be-named will backfire and cause people to look up from their phones and do more things in real life.¹
• Continuing to find ways to manage my relationship with technology and the Internet as The Industry makes it increasingly unpleasant to use both.
• Writing more, especially now that I’ve moved my domain to a pseudonym and feel more comfortable expressing myself without the burden of my professional identity.
• Camping!! I think I finally like camping??

And with that, I’ll finish this post off with some highlights of the past year. Have a great 2026, everyone!

Books I’ve enjoyed

In no particular order.

• Doppelgänger by Naomi Klein
• On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder
• The Actual Star by Monica Byrne
• The Plot Against America by Phillip Roth
• ⭐ My Ishmael by Daniel Quinn
• Re-read The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin
• How To Hide An Empire by Daniel Immerwahr
• Currently reading East of Eden by John Steinbeck
• Still slowly reading Harry Potter in Spanish, but it’s helping my vocabulary a lot!

Music on frequent rotation

I started using ListenBrainz this year to help with this section but only have a half year of data. Next year you can expect better!

• Corpo Possível by Bruna Mendez (Brazilian indie)
• Cabin In The Sky by De La Soul (Long Island hip-hop; banger of a late 2025 release)
• year of the slug by Caroline Rose (Austin, TX indie)
• ⭐ De Todas Las Flores by Natalia Lafourcade (Mexican folk/jazz)
• Night by Nils Frahm (German classical piano)

Seasonal photons

…As wrangled by my cameras’ sensors.

Our return to Brooklyn began in the frigid winter of Greenpoint, subletting an apartment while we searched for a permanent place to live.

Spring in Green Lakes State Park, near Syracuse, NY.

Row houses, captured during a Summer walk of the entirety of Bedford Avenue.

Peaking leaves during Fall in Bed-Stuy.