2025 in Review

10 years ago, I created a version of this website that included these annual reviews of my life. Little from that original version of the website remains, yet these reviews have remained constant that whole time. What's telling to me is that despite periods of the website being removed from public view, writing these reviews remained important to me. Reflecting on the past year has been useful, even if just to capture where my thinking is at the time.

A Midlife Re-Imagining

I went into 2025 expecting a lot of changes to my life. Becoming a father for the first time or starting graduate school are life-changing events each on their own. Experiencing both at the same time can be a lot for any person. During many tiring nights trying to get my baby to sleep, I spent a lot of mental time taking stock of everything in my life that has led me to this point.

The term "midlife crisis" has always bothered me, if for no other reason than it being a boring cliche. Despite this, feelings of experiencing such a crisis have been in the background of my thoughts for a couple of years now. While exploring some academic texts on the topic, one point stuck out to me:

It is important to distinguish between midlife transition and midlife crisis.

-Encyclopedia of Aging and Public Health

Approaching this period as a transition in life instead of as a crisis has helped in thinking about where I have come from in life, and how I should move forward.

The most obvious change is that becoming a parent has required a complete rearrangement of my daily life. But it has also forced me to think about who I am as a person, and what do I want to model for my child as he grows. I have spent much of my life as a dabbler: approaching many different topics, obtaining a base understanding of it, but moving on before becoming an expert. This is fun, but it also means I do not gain a full understanding of these topics as I would like.

Returning to college has force my hand on this topic, at least a little. Graduate school requires expertise in a specified area, forcing me to focus in place of dabbling. In general though, college is great for finding out what you enjoy most. My first time in college was one of the best times of my life, and having a second chance to experience the rediscovery of myself is a wonderful experience.

In thinking about what I want to focus on for the next stage of my life, graduate school is helping shape that. Engineering is high on the list, both for personal enjoyment and needing it to graduate. Writing more is an obvious one too, as it is both required for report writing but also a fun hobby to fall in love with again. And the rest... I will figure it out as I go.

Favorite Albums

• Antares Station, by Martin Stürtzer
• ARC Raiders, by Patrik Andrén & Johan Soderqvist
• Chronosphere, by Lars Leonhard
• Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, by Ludvig Forssel & Woodkid
• Fragments of the Machine [Data Archive Vol. 1], by Sascha Dikiciyan
• Pathways, by The Birthday Massacre
• A Thousand Little Deaths, by Blackbriar
• Vanities, by Malibu

Favorite Games

Survival is a weird genre for me. Most games within it are not enjoyable for me, but the few that are become long-time favorites of mine. Dune: Awakening has hit the right mix of survival crafting, base-building, and online interactions that it quickly became my most played game of the year. Some questions remain about the long-term viability of the playerbase, but even if that takes a turn for the worse, my time has been both enjoyable and quite memorable.

ARC Raiders finally cracked the code in creating an extraction shooter that I enjoy. Everything about the game feels great to play, and the presence of proximity voice chat has allowed the playerbase to grow in unique and surprisingly friendly ways. This is the first online shooter where I felt like roleplaying a character was fun, using that voice chat to lose myself even more into the game.

The Talos Principle is one of my favorite all-time games, so any remake of it that stays true to the original will of course be a top game of the year. Reawakened does an incredible job of updating the visuals to the game while retaining everything else that was perfect about the original. The music, the philosophical debates, the challenging puzzles, the snarky library assistant: all retained. The world created is sublime and now meshes well with the wonderful sequel released a few years ago.

I have a love/hate relationship with Obsidian games. Their CRPGs are great, especially the Pillars of Eternity duology. But their first-person games I tend to bounce off of quickly. Avowed thankfully was different, and I think it's largely due to its connection to the world of Pillars of Eternity. The world has a lot of small details, leading to some rewarding exploration. Like many games, the RPG systems Obsidian creates are not as in-depth as I would like, but everything else that surrounds it is wonderful and memorable.

updated: 2026-02-21