Hello, friends and enemies, another year has gone by! 2025 was, uh, quite a year. I think a defining issue of my year was dealing with my knee (and other health issues). I know, another rotten year of figuring out a health problem, just when I thought there was nothing left. My right knee, previously believed to be the “good” knee, started giving me trouble during the summer and it was downhill from there. Learning that I have to confine myself to low-impact activity forever is a huge drag—this can’t be overstated—but it is leading me to some interesting places as I try to get creative within these limitations.
This is the first year in a little while that my end-of-year post doesn’t conclude with “keep doing what I’m doing.” I mean, I’m doing a lot of good stuff and will keep doing many things, but I’ve got some other ideas too. I feel more able to think about how I structure my time since I’m having to make changes for health reasons. I really have to rethink how I approach moving my body, both in that I have to do a lot of regular exercise to keep my knee from getting worse and that I can’t do anything too strenuous that would aggravate it (maybe I should be taking up tightrope walking with these competing demands [joking!]). I have to keep up with doing my PT exercises regularly and do what I’ve been calling my “boring” exercise, stuff like walking or riding a bike. I’ve realized boring exercise is not going to work for me. I just started unicycling again (as discussed in my last post) and I’m hoping I can do that instead of walking or biking. The other thing I am working on right now is regaining the ability to hang from a bar. If I can hang from the bar I can start doing interesting bar exercises but first, one must hang. I’m also going to try an aqua aerobics class, since apparently Elk Grove has a whole bunch. The only thing I am wary of is ear infections, but surely I could go “aqua jogging” without too much trouble?
I bought a ton of stickers (from a brand called Stickii) and am currently rewarding myself with a sticker when I do my boring exercise, bar hang practice, and PT exercise according to my schedule (I’m not doing everything every day). I do find this strangely motivational. I’m just sticking them in my day planner to enjoy. Did you know you can just give yourself a sticker for any reason? Try it out!
I’ve been thinking about other ways I use my time too. In 2025, I started learning some German thinking we would go to Eurovision in 2026 (alas, we have canceled the plans). Since I’ve been working on both Spanish and Icelandic for a while now, I kind of assumed I did not have room in my life for actively studying another language, but considering I found time to learn German, that was an incorrect assumption. With that in mind, I am going to spend some time this year digging back into Arabic. I have a whole-ass bachelor’s degree in the language, but barely remember anything. It sucks! I want to use the language I studied for years because I think it’s cool. I will discuss the Arabic studies more in a future post, but for now I am simply announcing my intentions to all. Don’t worry, I’m not giving up on Spanish or Icelandic. I’m just adding one more language into the mix.
Here are some other things on my mind heading into 2026:
- Read more! It felt like I hardly spent any time reading in 2025 and I hate that. I’m not necessarily talking about hitting some number of books or pages but I just want to spend more time reading because that makes me feel more like myself. One good thing about doing my boring exercise is that I have a stationary bike in the garage and I can at least read books while I do it.
- Do some knitting. The battle with carpal tunnel continues but I think I am slowly figuring out how to knit in a way that is less aggravating. I’ve been adjusting how I tension and trying out a Norwegian knitting thimble to take some of the pressure off. I think if I want to get any knitting done, I have to try doing a little every day, which is exactly not how my brain operates. I naturally want to do things in around three-hour chunks because it’s hard to switch tasks and get dialed into something.
- Try new recipes from my cookbooks. I am so tempted to make a new year’s resolution like “cook through [cookbook name] cookbook” or “cook a new recipe every week,” but I know I simply will not do that. There will be weeks that I won’t want to do anything and I am not convinced that discipline is these kinds of things is all that worthwhile. In any case, I have many books with recipes I want to try so I hope to explore more of that this year.
- Find opportunities to hang out in public. This is a surprising one but hear me out. I’ve been getting a lot of social time from going to dance class, but now I’m going to just one per week and quitting my other two, so I need to make sure I get out of the house. Maybe I am going to hang out at a cafe and read a book. Maybe I will make more time to visit my friends. I don’t know! I also am reflecting on the fact that part of what I always found fun about unicycling and juggling was hanging out with other people while doing it. If you want to come hang out and unicycle/juggle, let me know! I can teach you if you want to learn!
- I don’t really know how to express this one very well but in a time of authoritarianism and oppression, I want to lean into being a little weirdo, a bit of a jester, just a silly guy. I’m not sure what form that will take but I am going to be looking for ways to embrace whimsy and weirdness as often as possible. Maybe I’ll get a silly hat to wear while I unicycle.
Finally, here is everyone’s favorite tradition: my annual mood board!
2025 Highlights
I guess I’m doing this post backwards since we are not moving in chronological order, but that is what felt right this time. I assembled a list of the year’s major happenings and was about to call it “highlights” but they were definitely not all highlights. So, let’s start with all the stupid health things that happened this year. It’s no wonder it feels so hard to be alive with all this shit going on.
- My knees are so jacked up with arthritis and a lack of cartilage that I have to stop dancing or doing anything strenuous on my knees, as discussed above. I also had my first MRI in the process of evaluating what exactly was wrong.
- I wondered why it was getting so hard to breathe for me earlier this year and found out that I have had severe acid reflux! Thankfully this one is easily treated with medication. It is wild to just be living with things wrong with me for years and assuming that’s how it feels to live.
- In October, we took care of my dogs-in-law for a few weeks. This led to my first migraine with aura and a trip to the ER (they said I was fine). The migraines have not returned so we must conclude that they were dog-induced.
- My doctor informed me that my blood sugar was in the pre-diabetic range but I made some adjustments and now I’m not pre-diabetic. At least I have that going for me.
- I got braces in June and fortunately my teeth cooperated so I got them off again right before Christmas. Now I have to wear a retainer full time for the next two months before I can switch to just wearing it at night.
With that out of the way, here are some actual highlights of 2025:
- I wrote a lot! According to WordPress statistics, I’ve written just under 81,000 words (not including this post). Some of my best pieces include this month’s essay about the experience of being expelled from Brigham Young University 20 years ago and my thoughts about the shit show that is our current government, not the least of which were the completely false pronouncement that Tylenol causes autism (did we ever get a lawsuit for that by the way?), witnessing the live-streamed genocide in Gaza, and the discussion of AI as the aesthetic of fascism.
- I also wrote some good guides: finding books to read, assembling an emergency kit, what to do now that social media is dying.
- I made voter guides in English and Spanish for the special election.
- I translated a whole bunch of Wikipedia pages. In Icelandic, I finished translating articles in the Skagafjörður category, and for Spanish we’ve been doing a little bit of everything, as usual.
- I performed in two dance recitals.
- I finished knitting a tiny shawl, carpal tunnel be damned.
- I hosted potlucks with my friends celebrating soup, tea party foods, the “three sisters” (corn, beans and squash), and holiday cookies.
- I made plans to go to Vienna for Eurovision next year with my friends and started learning German to facilitate that, then cancelled the plans because the Eurovision member countries are doubling down on their support for Israel.
- I switched to Linux!
- I Started volunteering at the Lavender Library in February and was the volunteer of the month in September for my work on updating (or in some cases, creating) documentation.
- I was a patron of the arts and went to see the Sacramento Ballet, monster jam (is this art?), Disney on Ice, a show at B Street Theater, and comedian Maria Bamford.
- In house drama, our new shower was finally finished and we got a new stove and microwave.
- I downloaded all my ebooks and fully extricated myself from the Amazon/Kindle system.
- I read Don fucking Quijote in Spanish!
Kitchen Witchery
Here are some of my favorite foods I made this year. Looks like a lot of pumpkin and galettes, based on the photos. I’d also like to note that I got the snow cone maker attachment for the Kitchen Aid mixer, so it was snow cone central here last summer.
Cat Therapy
Here are some of my favorite cat photos from the last year for your nerves.
