A new year's blog post
Ahh shit it's 2026 now. I feel like I should mark this occasion with a blog post about what 2025 was like, at least for me.
The absolute state of things (the world, etc)
Wow, it's not great, huh??? Fucking hell.
If there's one good thing I can say about this, it's that everything was such dogshit that it spurred me into becoming a lot more politically active than I have been in a long time. I've been to protests, I've written many, many letters to elected officials, I've gotten involved in a local party, I've given money where I can. Did any of that accomplish anything? Fuck knows. But it's a bit easier to live with myself if I'm trying.
But how am I really?
2025 was my first year without being on SSRIs at all since... 2018. This has mostly been alright. I have not felt like a different person or anything. Sometimes I have second-guessed my choice to come off them, as at times my anxiety has felt a lot heavier. But it's hard to say if that's because of my brain chemistry or because of external factors.
It was also the year I stopped seeing my therapist, who I had been with for even longer than the SSRIs. I was quite worried about how that would go, because therapy was an extremely useful thing for me. But for a while I'd been showing up at sessions going "this is what happened and here's how I worked through it", rather than needing the session to do the work, so we felt like it was time.
I have not been able to get my ADHD medication at all so let's not even bother to talk about that.
March was the high point of the year for me. I went to London, saw a play that I loved and met up with a fandom friend for the first time. June was also good, as I got out of the country for a bit and visited family. The low point was November, with its aborted holiday and general Novemberness.
But mentally, as the year goes, there were no huge ups and no huge downs. In my mood-tracking app, every month has averaged out to a solid "meh".
So, you know, I'm hanging in there.
What am I even doing with my life?
My proudest achievement of the year is definitely my writing. In the first half of the year, I finished and published a pretty substantial fanfic that I'm still extremely proud of. In the second half of the year, I wrote (and then mothballed) the first draft of an urban fantasy romance novel that I hope to come back to at some point, and then I got stuck into writing another novel that I'm still feeling really excited about. Overall I've written at least 200,000 words. Given what a large part of my life writing has become, it's hard to believe that I only got back into it in 2024. It really gives me a sense of purpose like nothing else at the moment.
In March, I went to a gig for the first time in years and had so much fun that I went to six more gigs in 2025. Right now, I have tickets for another four gigs in the next few months. Live music has been a really fun release for me and I am excited to have rediscovered it.
I quit my gym because I was struggling to make time for it, which feels bad. But I did start doing archery again. I fell off this a bit at the end of the year so I'd better get my shit together and restart soon before I accidentally drop it entirely.
I also fell off learning Welsh when I let my Duolingo subscription die a well-deserved death this autumn. I would like to find a way to get back into Cymraeg as I'm worried I'm getting rusty.
I read 77 books and watched 125 films. This felt like an especially good film-watching year for me, as I was more intentional about seeking out classics I'd never seen and really enjoyed a lot of them. I even made a best of 2025 page showing off my favourites.
I got into collecting CDs and developed a serious eBay problem as a result.
I started this website in September. At the time, I wasn't sure if I'd stick with it, but right now I'm having fun.
Oh and I got a tattoo lmao. I still kind of can't believe I did that. Bit of a rogue move for me tbh
And it keeps coming 'til the day it stops
It is very difficult to feel optimistic about 2026, more because of the general "fuuuuuuuck!" of things than my own personal situation.
I am not much of a resolution-setter (although I definitely used to be back in my self-help book era). But I do hope that I:
- finish the book I'm working on
- find ways to be effectively politically engaged without setting my brain on fire
- stick with the hobbies that make me happy
- don't beat myself about meaningless crap
But basically, it's the same goal as every year: get through it, be good to people.
Good luck!