2025 🔜 2026

And now it’s time for my traditional annual wrap-up post, and my hopes for next year.

2025 checkup

How did I do with my stated aspirations for this year?

  • Music
    • I indeed did a bunch of music for Strawberry Jam 9, and got a job as a result of it, so the “paid soundtrack work” point happened! Yay!
    • I made no progress at all on Recombinant and Maximum Coverage
    • I made a little progress on Misfits
    • Also not mentioned but I have an idea for a jazz album which I also haven’t done anything on
  • Home
    • I made some progress on the workshop area (by replacing the old janky workbenches with new, decent ones with actual storage space) but it’s overall worse off than before
    • Tool cabinet is a nightmare, and I still don’t have a garden shed or greenshouse
    • I did improve the organization in my living room
    • I made no progress on my office
    • And I did not get rid of the clutter
  • Arts and Crafts
    • No progress on pottery
    • I did sell some stuff on Etsy but I eventually shut down that shop because it was frustrating to maintain for how little traffic I got on it; I set up a shop on Artisans Coop but I haven’t done much with it yet
    • I did not do any comics
    • I did not do any VRChat avatars aside from making some edits to the critter
    • I don’t even remember what the other art projects were, but I didn’t do any of them, whatever they are
  • Programming
    • Publ is still running on PonyORM and Misaka :(
    • The Bandcrash UI is still a major pain point
    • Bluesky OAuth is still not at a point where it’d work well with Publ/Authl (the problem is on Bluesky’s end)
    • And I’m still using Webmention+Isso and have done no work on fixing that either
  • Health
    • Vertigo’s better and mostly under control, but over the course of 2025 I came to realize it was more a fatigue issue than a vertigo issue that keeps me from driving
    • And I still don’t feel comfortable driving, although I replaced my piece of shit modern EV with a perfect beautiful 2008 Toyota shitbox
    • Pain management still eludes me; my least-bad option is still just getting high and turning into a lump on the couch (which I’m not doing as often, at least). I also tried a few psilocybin-based approaches, none of which turned out to be helpful
    • I do think I’ve gotten better at, as I put it, “acknowledging when things have gone well in the moment, being better at controlling the things I’m able to, and more accepting about the things I can’t,” but I still have a long ways to go (but it’s a process and a journey, not an endpoint)

Productivity(?) stats/wins

Here’s some random highlights for consideration:

  • This website:
    • Over 120 new posts, of which most were blog posts but there were a few non-bloggy things, and a bunch of the blog posts could have probably been articles anyway
  • Music:
  • Software projects:
    • Initiated a federated music streaming project which is slowly picking up interest
    • Built an AI tarpit which is happily plugging away and clogging poorly-written AI scraper bots to the tune of a few hundred hits per second, mwahahaha
    • Did some more work on Publ
    • Did a lot more work on Bandcrash
  • Home:
    • Reorganized my living room
    • Got my house painted (it’s purple now)
    • Finally got my basement/studio rodent-proofed (I am sure there are some rodents already in there, possibly deceased, though, but it’s a heckin' mess)
    • Improved the workbench situation in my basement as well

Setbacks

  • Fell out of favor with a couple of friend groups who each felt Very Important to me but it turned out they weren’t, but I’m still processing the loss all the same
  • Had a minor hormonal crisis, and still haven’t gotten that quite resolved due to supply chain issues with HRT
  • Had to take a break from my choir due to some interpersonal issues that led to burnout

Aspirations for 2026

  • Publ:
    • Finally replace Misaka with Mistune, which is long overdue (in fact I’ve been meaning to do this for nearly as long as Publ’s been a project)
    • Improve media embedding (which would be better to do after the Mistune migration)
    • Make the site indexer not so janky and blocking, especially for full-text search (and maybe switch to a different full-text search implementation, although FWIW according to my server stats very few actual search queries are ever made on-site)
    • Maybe revamp the docs as well, the site is kind of awful
  • Canimus:
    • Write a receiver and player
    • Write a personal collection server
    • Work with other stakeholders to get more publishers on board (particularly Faircamp, Mirlo, Bandwagon, and Subvert), and maybe use that as an encouragement to get more subscribers on board as well (especially The Indie Beat and Funkwhale)
  • Music:
    • Release a couple more albums (so many projects on the backburner…)
    • Figure out a non-frustrating way of getting my stuff back on streaming (I mean, aside from Canimus, where it already is, and which nobody actually uses yet)
    • Rejoin the choir
    • Finish the game OST
  • Home:
    • Finally get my basement/studio fully organized
    • Finally get my office organized
    • Finally get my dining room organized
    • Get my carport tidied up and possibly organized
    • Donate/sell a whole bunch of excess stuff that I no longer need and probably never needed to begin with
    • Build a garden shed or greenhouse or something
  • Personal:
    • Get comfortable driving again, ideally after figuring out where the fatigue/vertigo is coming from
    • Rebuild my social life
    • Get back into making comics
    • Finally set up a shop for my pottery and start making that again too (has it really been a year and a half since I made any?!)

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