30 years of blogging. I don’t even know what to do with that. The word blog had not been invented in 1995 when I launched this site, but from the early days I recognized the utility of giving people a reason to come back. So I was posting regular essays from day 1. I also used to redesign the site regularly, as that was a thing we did in the 1990s when all sites were hand coded. Meanwhile, this site hasn’t changed since I launched this version 8 years ago.

2025 certainly did not turn out as I expected. I started the year with a new job with one of the old-school A-list Drupal shops. Or so I thought. It turns out I was working for the smoldering shell of a flamed-out A-list Drupal shop that would cease to exist as a functioning entity by mid-year. 2 weeks into my summer job search, I had a lot of feedback from companies that would like my help, but not full-time. So I dusted off my freelance business plan, ran some projections, and went FT freelance in late June. I hit my 2025 projections, and if not for the fascists in Congress raising my health insurance premium 157%, I’d be feeling fantastic about 2026.

Last year I had the following plans in my EOY post.

• More creating, less consuming.
• More hiking.
• Probably less camping, reality of starting a new job.
• More birding.
• The Marvelous 3 Halloween show in Atlanta.

So how did I do?

I created my own company, so I’d call that one a win. I did not do more hiking, but that is directly related to starting a company. We only camped 20 nights, which is by far the least we’ve done since buying the camper. I think I’m going to have to work from the camper or a nearby library or coffee shop while camping if I want to camp more this year. We definitely did more birding, as documented by my eBird list submissions. Finances would have cost me the Marv 3 show if I hadn’t bailed earlier. It was an outdoor show, and driving 8 hours for a late afternoon show in late summer in Atlanta is just asking for it to be canceled due to a thunderstorm.

Given all the changes in my life in 2025, that’s not a bad end-of-the-year result.

So, the actual numbers.

• Camping: Only 20 nights :(
• Blog posts: 109, counting this one!
• Books: 50 on the books page, several of which are DNFs.
• I have no idea how many albums I bought this year. I did something to screw up the last modified dates in my music directory. I bought 15 last year, and I’m going to guess it’s below 10 this year.
• I logged 185 bird species across 60 checklists. I’m surprised at the number of checklists, as I expected it to be higher. But we did see significantly more species this year, so maybe we are just better at birding.

So, what is coming in 2026?

• I’ll be starting the year very busy taking classes for my Virginia Master Naturalist certification. That will keep me busy through the winter.
• As mentioned above, I want to experiment with working from the road. Perhaps we’ll do a short trip of up to a week this summer to test it out.
• We didn’t take any sort of extended vacation this year, so I definitely want to get a camping road trip planned, probably for the fall.
• I got 185 bird species this year, so I’m going to aim for 200 next year.
• Hopefully I can increase my income to offset the $1300/month increase in my health insurance premium.

Some sanity in the US government would be nice in 2026, but that is likely too much to wish for.

If you are celebrating the New Year tonight, please do so safely. The odds of me even being awake at midnight are slim.

Posted on December 31, 2025   #Site-News