2025 by the Numbers
I’m thankful 2025 is over. I’m glad that the new year is a chance to start over — to try again. I was on high alert at the beginning of the year as evidenced by the release of the quickly sold out Simple Sabotage Field Manual book and subsequent Do Not Obey in Advance bookmarks. I mostly dealt with that anxiety in part by limiting social media access. I deleted my Instagram account outright and removed everything else from my phone.
Instead of doomscrolling, I used that time and focus to instead put it towards things that actually matter like spending more time with family and friends, and towards personal projects like the aforementioned ones above plus a new sticker set, writing, designing and producing Context Window, producing a new edition of Ten Rules for Teachers and Students — and have made progress on projects that will hopefully come to fruition in 2026.
Musical Highlights
I covered my musical highlights from 2025 separately, but according to Apple Music Reply, I listened to 25,000 minutes of music covering 494 albums and around 2,500 songs. My top artist this year was Kathleen Edwards with 2,394 minutes of listening followed by Kate Bush, Genesis and Peter Gabriel. These particular choices were clearly providing valuable emotional support throughout the year which definitely plays into my listening habits overall. Aside from Kathleen Edwards having not one, but two albums in the running, it was also a Pink Floyd-heavy year with three albums landing in the top ten. Perhaps most interestingly to me though is the return of Radiohead in regular rotation. I have no complaints about this.
Reading Highlights
I handily surpassed my reading goal of 35 books for the year. I largely focused on fiction as a way to stoke my imagination rather than dwell too much on reality. I only left the late Frank Gehry’s biography unfinished, but will close that out early in the new year. Stephen King’s The Life of Chuck probably comes out as my favorite read since I read it twice. I also really enjoyed The Incident Report, Don't Suck Don't Die, Intermezzo, The Salt Path, Weepers, and The Ministry of Time a great deal. No real duds which is good.
Looking Forward
I’m very much over the chaos of another clown show presidency but I’ve found ways to largely tune out the worst of it. What concerns me most is where we go once it’s over. Following the acquisition in March, work feels stable. Since so much else outside work and home frequently feels spinning out of control, this is particularly comforting. That stability allowed me space to regroup and reconnect in many ways and I’m looking forward to more of that in 2026.
Mostly, I’d like fewer billionaires and f!*king nazis wrecking things for most of us.
Footnotes
- The culture at work is largely in-office but also flexible, so 191 days in SF doesn’t feel off the mark to me. That’s around 73% of possible days throughout the year. ↩
- Like last year, not a lot of travel but the trips we did make were all great. ↩
- Despite fewer trips out to walk the dog than in 2024, to my surprise I still managed to walk almost 10% more. ↩
- Although I went a little easier in 2024, I managed to get out on the whip about 20% more over 78 days than 2024’s 948 miles. Mostly I was happy to finally complete the ride from San Francisco to home. No crashes too which is always a good thing. ↩
- I expected my coffee consumption to have gone up more. Only a 20 cup difference between this year and last. ↩
- Conversely to coffee, I drank less tea this year. Nearly 80 cups less, largely prompted I suspect by fewer days working from home. ↩
- I upped my reading goal this year to 35 books (from 30 in 2024) and managed to read 40, a 17% percent overage. All that time on the train to and from SF helped me cover those 11,210 pages. ↩
- I watched more movies in 2025 too — 80, up from 67 in 2024. And of those, 23 were in a theatre which is more than double how many I saw in theatre last year. Weapons, Bugonia, Hamnet, and Superman were all favorites. Heck, I saw Superman three times in theatre! Last movie of the year was House of Dynamite. ↩
- A drop of about 15% compared to last year, but I equate that to other my attention put towards other endeavors and a general feeling of wanting to be a bit less online all the time. ↩
- Despite fewer total posts, shared links in Through Lines issues was up… quite a bit. By 290 (almost 25% year over year) to be exact and despite a move to a more manageable bi-weekly cadence. I expect to change this up a bit more too if only because it’s still kind of exhausting putting those together. ↩
- The Library is pretty well-formed at this point and so additions were considerably less this year — only about 20% of what was added in 2024. ↩
- Under the hood of the site though, I made about 16% more commits to the site repo. Lots of behind the scenes fiddling including improvements to the Now, Library, and other pages which were at least partly driven by a big pile of new plugins I developed for Kirby.. Maybe 2026 will see some kind of redesign? ↩
- The Riso didn’t see as much action in 2025 — only about 38% compared to last year. Coupled with a notable increase in paper costs and limited availability in general made for fewer prints. Specifically 3472 vs 8938 in 2024. The fact that I switched gears with my original plan to produce Context Window myself and ran out of steam on a second iteration of the Simple Sabotage Field Manual were likely the main drivers otherwise. ↩
- Kind of the same as last year. Not zero, which is good. And sooner or later maybe I’ll actually consider tabling at one of the local art book fairs. ↩
- I wasn’t planning on upgrading any tech this year but ended up with a new phone after my Sony A7ii camera died. A better phone with much better cameras made more sense than another standalone device. Technically this should maybe be -1 since the Mac running the Riso bit the dust. I did also recycle a big pile of devices with Apple last month. ↩
- Same as in 2025. No meaningful activity on the long-gestating Eclectic Fence typeface I started several years back. ↩
- Zero. Zilch. Nada. Instagram is no longer a going concern for me after deleting my account. F!*k Zuckerberg. ↩
- My Polaroid count dropped to about 60% of 2024’s output. Despite adding a new camera (the new Polaroid Flip), I’m ok with this though I do need to spend more time with that camera. ↩
- Pressing Matters is still holding strong as my only ongoing print subscription. ↩
- Apparently I had 5 fewer haircuts this year than in 2024. I thought it would be more. ↩
- I backed 2 Kickstarter projects in 2025 (4 in 2024) and both were fulfilled in short order. I’m still patiently awaiting the Newland Camera project from 2022 to arrive though they finally started shipping orders in small batches this year so hopefully early 2026? ↩
- Nada. This is ok. ↩
- Also nada, thank goodness. ↩
- The correct number of cases again, thankfully. ↩