January 18, 2026
I've been meaning to write a year-in-review blog post for 2025 since before the new year. Now, it's 18 days into 2026. That is approximately 1/20th of a year. In other words, 20 of these makes 1 year. That feels weird to think about!
I think that I put off writing this until now because, subconsciously, a part of me did not want to review this past year. Some things happened that were very tough, both in my own life and in the world in general. I won't go into detail about political or economic situations in the United States in 2025, because you either are already aware of them, or can find out from many other sources. But some of them did affect me personally in various ways.
Meanwhile, in the comparatively microscopic scale of my own life, I moved to a new city and executed a job search in a less-than-ideal market. Then, in the fall, I experienced the death of a friend, a week of incapacitating illness, and the engine failure of a vehicle, all within a very short span of time. While these things were difficult for me, I don't lead with them to lament, but rather, to acknowledge what happened and to hold myself with extra gentleness, and appreciate that I am still here, enjoying life and creating things every day.
Even though I procrastinated this blog post for weeks, a part of me also knew that it would be helpful to look back and recall the things that went well over the past year. So I'll write a bit about those things below.
- At the beginning of the year, I spent six weeks doing a coding retreat at Recurse Center, where I took time to further develop my programming skills, met lots of really nice and smart people, and built a virtual tarot card app as well as a variety of little experimental things.
- Later in the year, coasting on the high of my programming work at Recurse Center, I built myself a custom minimalist journaling app, which runs on a tiny raspberry pi server on my desk.
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I delved further into self-hosting, as well as home
automation, with some more projects that I definitely spent
way too much time on:
- Repurposed an e-ink reader as a wall-mounted clock and live calendar/weather display, through the power of linux and python.
- Started running home assistant, a very powerful open source home automation app, on a "server" (old computer) in my home.
- Established direct local control of various cheap and miscellaneous wifi-controlled light bulbs throughout our home. (No more relying on random companies' cloud servers and abandonware.)
- Set up a network of small battery-powered buttons and switches, running on the Zigbee radio protocol, which are linked into Home Assistant to control things in our home.
- Started a new job working at an art studio, where I learned about (and helped develop) unique processes for creating mathematical patterns and translating things between the physical and the digital. Also improved my skills with woodworking, which I brought into my home life by making some nice furniture.
- The people I work for adopted a puppy named Thor, and I watch him all the time, so I consider him a little bit my dog too. I love him and it's so cool to watch him grow up.
- Settled into our new home base of New Haven, Connecticut, met some lovely new people, and set up a home studio that I really enjoy working in.
- Did 4 collaborative performances as Reality Orp with my partner (in both life and the band) Andrei. I also did one solo audiovisual performance and one in collaboration with fellow artist Lee Tusman. So I played 6 shows in total.
- I also did 3 talks/workshops, and had one of my video art pieces screened in Croatia.
- Read 17 books in total. 6 of them were from The Expanse series by James S. A. Corey, which I ravenously demolished all of starting in late 2024. And 3 were from the Divine Cities trilogy by Robert Jackson Bennett.
- Watched 90 movies. Um... Wow. Andrei and I have been on a kick of watching tons of movies together over the past year. It's a lot of fun.
- Started a membership at my local makerspace, where I used the laser cutter, wood shop, and printmaking studio.
- Made and sent out 5 editions of Mystery Objects for zine club. I also made several e-zines.
- Made my own font for the first time.
- Built some new pages for this website, including my links page and a new section called notes.
- Moved one of my main email addresses off of Google, and migrated to a custom email domain, to avoid future lock-in. It was a lot of work but I finally took the time to do it.
- Made a deck of cards of my creative ideas. This project straddled the new year, but I'm including it anyway!
- Started a biweekly music collaboration project with a friend, for which I've made 3 songs so far.
- Spent time with people I love.
Sometimes, what we say no to can be just as important, or even more important, than what we do. Whether it's to take time to rest, or to make more time to work on things I care about, not doing things is a skill I am learning to value more and more. So while I'm proud of the things I've done, I also want to recognize, and even appreciate, the blank spaces in this list that only I can see: things I chose not to do at all. I want to be intentional about how I spend my time, and make sure it aligns with my values. And I think that, over time, I'm moving in the right direction in that regard.
OK, that's enough reviewing for now. Time to come back to the present, and see what comes next. Onward!