This is not a 2025 wrap up post
I decided to start the year with a hot Vinyasa yoga class at 9:30am on January 1st 2026. Despite suffering from a week of pre-menstrual full-body pain and desperate fatigue, for some wild reason I felt compelled to see in the new year this way. “I’ll start the year as I mean to go on,” I affirmed valiantly. It was horrible. I cried.
I’ve been regularly attending yoga classes since April 2025, and I’m very proud of attending a total of 58 classes in 2025. Yoga started as a way to explore a different way of self-care and recovery after a very difficult 2024 and start to 2025, but it quickly became something I gravitated towards, and made part of my regular routine. Slow flow or restorative flow sessions are my favourite. This type of session, comprising meditative sequences of asanas (postures) and reflective thinking has given me a new appreciation for the uniqueness and abilities of my body, has greatly improved my strength and flexibility (I can touch my toes for the first time in my adult life!), and has gifted me with the space to try and be truly present, to quieten my raging mind (to an extent), and to look inward to understand myself more.
Vinyasa yoga is one of the more dynamic styles of yoga, comprising an energetic flow of different movements, rather than more static yoga asanas. I took a few of these sessions in 2025, but every time I found myself fighting against it rather than embracing the practice. Today, I figured out why. As the teacher urged the class to keep pushing ourselves, to find more strength, to keep going, for just a few more breaths, all I could hear was my inner monologue screaming I’m fucking tired. Now, this could probably be attributed to the pre-menstrual full-body pain and desperate fatigue, for when I got home, the period goddesses descended upon me, but I also think it surfaced something else.
Vinyasa yoga reminds me of the relentlessness of life. Find more strength: just a few more breaths/minutes/hours/days/weeks. Keep going. Keep grinding, bro.
I don’t want to keep going. I want to rest. I want to recover. I’m fucking tired.
For a few weeks now, a 2025 wrap up post has been on my mind. It’s the thing you do when you’re a person on The Internet Who Has a Blog, after all. But I don’t want to write a wrap up post. I’m fucking tired.
I could talk about how at the start of 2025 I was in debilitating pain and thought I would never type again. I could talk about how I learned how to code with my voice as a result of this. I could talk about how I changed jobs and moved from Sentry to Nordcraft, and about all the educational videos I made and the 23 blog posts I wrote. I could talk about the seven conferences I spoke at, or the one I emceed at, and that I went to Denmark to visit the Nordcraft office three times, and about how all of the travelling completely burned me out and how I never want to leave my house again, at least in 2026.
I could also talk about how I decided to retire from streaming on Twitch to make room in my life for other creative things, and how my studio now feels horribly surreal and empty without my streaming setup, and how that makes me feel a deep sadness that I can’t quite articulate. I could also talk about how I have the most beautiful group of Internet Friends who I am truly grateful for every single day, and how our friendship blossomed after attending a conference together, and how we ate pie and mash on one of the hottest days of the year in the UK, and how they are so smart and so creative, and how privileged I am to be accepted, welcomed, and loved by them.
I could also talk about how I turned 40, and how I received some wonderful letters from people on The Internet to mark the occasion. I could also talk about how I sent the 100th issue of my newsletter, and how I surpassed 500 subscribers, and how much of an achievement that feels like.
I could also talk about my wonderful child, who challenges me to be more patient and compassionate and loving every single day. I could talk about how he is eight years old now, and going through some kind of separation anxiety phase, where he knows he doesn’t need me as much anymore, but he still wants to need me, and as a result I have no time in the evenings to truly relax or indulge in the right headspace to be creative, because he won’t go to sleep until I do. I could also talk about how his school schedule is so demanding I wonder if the school leadership ever consider that parents actually have jobs and other conflicting responsibilities when they request my attendance at all manner of afternoon soirees. I could talk about how I have to turn up, how I have to be there for him, because the look on his face when he finally picks me out in a crowd of people is something I cherish.
I could talk about all the creative things I have done this year, except I haven’t had the time, energy, or space to do many. I could talk about how my second very large cross stitch is almost complete after 18 months of working on it. I could talk about how I resumed my drum lessons in September after taking a break for a year, and how that has truly reenergised me. I could talk about how I find time to play the piano here and there, and how I recorded a couple of performances for the group chat that were enjoyed and well received, and I could talk about how I started to create so many new pieces of music by noodling on the piano and writing a cool idea on a scrap of paper that were subsequently abandoned because I didn’t feel like anything was fucking good enough. I could talk about how I’m aching to create music again, how I have so many ideas in my head I can’t sort through them in any meaningful way, and how I am just yearning for the space and time and energy to just fucking make something.
I could also talk about how I’ve been trying to rebuild and redesign my website, and have been doing so since April 2025, and how I have absolutely zero time to sink into this because work is so incredibly busy and also I’m fucking tired. I could also talk about all the other ideas I’ve had for websites and side projects, and how I feel a constant lingering sense of guilt and failure that I have manifested absolutely nothing I truly wanted to. I could talk about how maybe 2026 could be different, but how it’s very hard to visualise right now, because I have a very busy first quarter of 2026 coming up at work where I am creating a new video course. I could talk about how I’ll be making around 50 videos, and how it’s all rather stressful and awkward timing-wise because in February I am having major mouth surgery, and I won’t be able to speak properly for a few weeks, and you definitely don’t want to see me on camera with a fat swollen face.
I could also talk about how 2025 has been a disgusting year for the world, in particular the technology industry, and how fucking AI has invaded every fibre of our online experience, and how no one whatsoever wants this, but we just have to accept those fucking AI sparkles littering every corner of apps and browsers and search results with no easy way to turn them off or opt out or just make it go away, and how this has contributed to how fucking tired I am, and how I really do not want to be on The Internet for one more day, if I can help it.
But this is not a wrap up post. So I won’t talk about any of it.
