2025 recap!
thanks for tagging me @thewholelemon @j-trow-95 @monbons @run-for-chamo-miles and @prettygoododds! i loved seeing your 2025s through your eyes!
this is kinda long, so buckle in
stuff i wrote
at the start of the year i set myself the hopefully-attainable goal of writing 1500 words a week. i started off strong and from January to March wrote a decent amount every day, surpassing 100k words in March!
but in April i started falling off. i don't even know why, honestly, my motivation just vanished.
my year's word count currently stands at 39,540 which i'm still really pleased with, but it's a far cry from the 75,000 i had aspired to.
however! in October i took part in @erostober and i think the change in focus really helped get my motivation going again. i ended up writing 23 fics totalling 56,600 words! this was only my second time ever publishing explicit fic and the comments really boosted my confidence in doing so!
so that's 96,140 words total this year!
stuff i watched
in terms of movies, i can only really remember a couple. i watched Nosferatu back in January but didn't enjoy it that much. i watched Sinners twice, and really enjoyed that. i also really liked Wake Up Dead Man. and Conclave, i watched that three times!
as for shows, i saw Dan and Phil's Terrible Influence in January in Manchester, it just so happened to be Phil's birthday show and it was so special.
a friend and i saw a show called Gods Of Salford in April, but it was pretty meh.
in August a friend and I took a day trip to Edinburgh for the fringe fest! we saw:
It's Gonna Blow, an immersive play about the eruption of Vesuvius (the company did Burning Down The Horse, about the Trojan War, last time and i think i preferred that, but It's Gonna Blow was still great);
Arachne, a one-woman retelling of the myth of Arachne;
A Wolf Shall Devour The Sun, less a play and more a storytelling session, with folk music and shadow puppetry, recounting three lesser-known folk tales about wolves. this was my favourite!
i didn't really watch any TV shows aside from the BBC's monday night game shows 😅
stuff i read
i usually keep track of every book i read, but this year i forgot. only a couple really stand out in my memory.
i kicked off the year with a book i hated, Unfortunately She Was A Nymphomaniac by Joan Smith. i got the book as a gift and was really excited because it was supposedly a feminist book about the Julio-Claudian women, but very early on i started noticing some troubling dogwhistles, so i googled the author and discovered she's a SWERF/TERF. however, i kept reading with that in mind and discovered she's also deeply insecure and intent on putting her peers down, and incredibly biased in which sources she believes and doesn't. so yeah. would not recommend one bit.
however i also read some books i loved, namely Mythica by Emily Hauser, which is about Bronze Age women! it was fascinating and really opened my eyes to so much of never considered before, like how much effort went into weaving clothes or the fact that many Hittite queens were also priestesses!
on one long, hot day in the summer i sat in the garden and read the entire comic adaptation of Watership Down, and i loved that too!
i also read Ovid's Heroides and re-read the Iliad this December, and tabbed every mention of the characters who also appear in my wip.
stuff i did
once again I helped with lambing in March. we had 30 lambs from 16 ewes- it was a very busy month!! sadly 4 didn't make it, but that's a part of farming. three had to be to be bottle fed, then one got adopted by a sheep who sadly had stillborns. but the other two stayed on the bottle, so that meant feeding four times a day. two lambs were also born with broken legs, so needed splints we changed every few days. fortunately the legs healed and after a few months they were hopping around like nothing was amiss!
i turned 24 in April and had a symposium themed dress up party! i got blackout drunk and had a hangover for the first time. that probably isn't something to brag about, but i've always been able to hold my drink really well so it felt significant.
then in May, my three goats kidded! they each had a single- Mina had Agatha, Juno had Jude, and Lucy had Edith. i swear every year i forget just how freaking tiny newborn kids are! used saints names this year, feel free to suggest categories for next year!
also in May i attended Durham pride. we were some of the first to arrive and we'd made signs, all in support of trans people because of the recent supreme court judgement here on TERF island. i guess that signalled us as safe to other trans people and we ended up being part of a group with a megaphone, chanting for trans rights. i went around afterwards and got people to write postcards to their MPs either thanking them for being trans allies or telling them to do better, depending. i posted them all myself afterwards.
about a month later the horrible new council cut the funding of pride because of what they called "trans agenda street theatre" which almost certainly meant us, whoops. seriously, fuck Reform UK. luckily pride said they won't be stopped and the Miner's Association held a fundraiser for pride in solidarity!
in June i also went to Manchester pride, but we didn't march, we stood and watched the parade. my favourite part was an absolutely massive hoard of people in pup masks, afterwards we ended up on a tram with two pups and a football hooligan who got into a deep philosophical conversation. i love humans.
in July, my friends and i's D&D campaign turned 4 years old! we made cupcakes to celebrate.
unfortunately in October my billy goat, Hadrian, got sick. we took him to the vets and it turned out he had a really high worm count that was essentially sucking all his blood. we gave him all the treatment we could but it was too late, the problem with prey animals like goats is they hide how sick they are until they can't anymore, and by that point, it's hard to bring them back from the brink. we spent three days doing everything we could for him but he passed in his sleep.
not only was this hard on me emotionally, but it left us without a billy goat just a month before breeding season. billy goats can be pretty hard to come by as most people castrate their males unless they have a buyer lined up, so we ended up having to travel 4 hours to buy one, then 4 hours back, all in one day. my new billy goat is called Casper, and he's done a fantastic job with the girls, all three seem to have gotten pregnant first time. now Casper has fallen in love with Loki, which means he is a bicon, but unfortunately for him, Loki doesn't like him back.
finally, this December i passed my driving test! i started learning back in the summer and this was my third attempt. now i just need to get a car...
tags
i can't possibly tag everyone who ever interacted with my posts and made me smile this year, but here's the ones i can think of! as well as the people who tagged me, there's @forabeatofadrum @sunshinesalmon @cutestkilla @bookish-bogwitch @youarenevertooold @that-disabled-princess @noblecorgi @orange-peony @larkral @blackberrysummers @aristocratic-otter @artsyunderstudy @alexalexinii @hushed-chorus @you-remind-me-of-the-babe @meanjeansjeans @leithillustration @ic3que3n @stitchy-queerista @bleedinghearthypocrit @shrekgogurt @comesitintheclover @shemakesmeforget @ileadacharmedlife @supercutedinosaurs @otherpeoplesheartachept-2 @ninemagicks @otherworldsivelivedin @jasonfunderberkerthefrogexists @imagineacoolusername @fatalfangirl @ebbpettier @ivelovedhimthroughworse @shutup-andletme-go @theearlgreymage @alleycat0306 @carryonsimoncarryonbaz
sorry i kinda fell off from sharing WIP Wednesday and Six Sentence Sunday, i'll try to get back into it next year.
and i hope 2026 is kind to all of us!
