In keeping with tradition, here’s my top ten list of the best events of 2025 and the worst events of 2025, vaguely ranked in the order that they most impacted my life/mental health.
After the initial panic of finding myself unexpectedly without a job for the first time in a dozen years, I made a plan. Despite my fears of the unknown, I had fun executing that plan, which resulted in multiple job offers from multiple organizations I genuinely wanted. Ultimately, I chose a job doing something I like with a group of sincere people who have become fast friends. (June 9-August 18)
My boys have reached an age where they enjoy playing with each other for prolonged periods of time, even if Gus won't admit it. (Fall)
Gus has gotten into watching/playing sports in a way I assumed he wouldn't and I love talking to him about it. It's mostly attributable to him hearing his friends talk sports, and the camaraderie he felt with his baseball team, but it also helped that I let him stay up late to watch football with me on Sundays, Mondays, and Thursdays. (Summer-Fall)
Gus starting walking to school on his own with the neighborhood kids, which has given him a sense of independence and vastly improved our morning routine chaos. (August/September?)
I thoroughly enjoyed serving as the president of the UA Little Rock Alumni Association Board of Directors. (January-December)
Magnus went to PreK, saving us a ton of money in daycare costs, but also, I was eager to see how he would handle a non-Montessori environment. He's doing well.
Liz and I went to St. Louis to see Foxing's farewell show. Over the last four-ish years, Foxing has become my favorite band. Seeing them leave everything they had left to give out on that stage at The Pageant in their hometown was something that I hope I remember for the rest of my life. (December 6)
I had my first public reading of new written work since 2022 at Zeitgeist Reading Series and it reminded me that I still have something to say and the ability to say it well. (February 20)
We had some good family trips this year -- DC, Gatlinburg, Arizona, New Orleans, Tulsa, and the Buffalo River.
I served as chair of the Downtown Food Truck Festival, which was a raging success and helped showcase a game-changing part of our city. (September 21)
Before I give you my "Worst events" list, I need to say that there is no easy way to rank the loss of loved ones against other things. My great aunt Beverly moved away years ago and so losing her (May 19) didn't affect my life that much in 2025, but if I were making a list of the people who had the most influence on me throughout my entire life? Not many would be above her. She played multiple significant roles for me at various points in my life -- as a kid, as a college student, as a young adult, and as a parent to young children. While she may have died last year, the impact of her life on mine is still so profound -- and sustainable -- that I feel like she is still very much with me, and so I will not put her death on this list.
I have a tendency to mourn people before they die so that I am better prepared to deal with their death when it arrives, but I have found my grandmother's cancer diagnosis (August) too much to emotionally bear. I feel myself blocking out even the idea that she may not survive. She is too precious to me. I have too many things to tell her still.
The hard drive I've been carrying around for 15ish years crashed, which caused me to lose everything I've ever written -- interviews with deceased relatives, graduate school essays, journals, lists, letters -- as well as all of my photos and videos. (August)
My mother went to the hospital with blood pressure issues that the doctors think they have under control, but I don't like it. (May 5)
At some point, I broke my fairly solid gym habit. I don't know when, but that's how these things go -- you just look up and it happened a while back.
A few times this fall I think I drifted into a functioning depression. Or maybe it's a mid-life crisis. I don't know. Liz and I decided it might be stemming from my not having a project, so we gave me one that will hopefully show up on my 2026 Best list. Stay tuned.
I got addicted to bullshit games on my phone. Like, for real. Every second I could find, I wanted to play Bricks'n'Balls or Fruit Merge or Wool Crush. (Recognized in December, when I deleted them all.)
After a lifetime of perfect vision, things finally started getting a little blurry. John recommended I get some readers with a +0.25 lens in the right eye. (January 23)
I got sick on a work trip and it was a miserable experience. (January 17)
Our carbon monoxide detectors gave us so many false readings over the course of a few weeks that we bought more, but those also gave us false readings, so we finally convinced ourselves the alerts were real and we might die, so we called the fire department. (Nov 10)
Previous Best/Worst Lists: 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024.
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