A year of yap: Looking back at 2025

I took a break from writing in October. There’s an anxiety to that kind of pause, the sense that momentum is something you’re always on the verge of losing. As weeks passed, there was this gnawing that I should write something. Anything. But what?

I rarely get writers’ block while I’m writing. It shows up between stretches. Writing is a muscle and, like any muscle, softens when unused. When I started this newsletter, I published once a month, then twice, then—somehow—multiple times a week. The ideas kept coming as long as I kept showing up. And then I took a break.

I don’t take breaks often. I went straight from Figma to running AIR, writing my way through. At some point, it felt reasonable—necessary, even—to drop something and see what happened. As it turns out, not much.

It was probably no coincidence that around this time, I was in my first trimester (I’m pregnant!) and experiencing a level of exhaustion that made my usual strategy of powering through nonfunctional. I’d wake up an hour later at my desk, drool pooled next to my keyboard. I nodded off on the subway, couches, at dinner—anywhere I stopped moving. Giving up caffeine didn’t help. (After Cohort 0 introduced me to Celsius, losing it felt particularly cruel.)

People kept telling me, “Listen to your body,” —a skill I hadn’t spent much time cultivating. Except, it no longer felt optional. Listen, or fall asleep somewhere inconvenient. Listen, or scramble to find a bathroom in Midtown. It reminded me of Ella Enchanted, except the curse was obeying signals from my own body.

When the second trimester hit, some energy returned. I’d love to say I applied the lessons I’d just learned, but instead I funneled it into cleaning out every drawer in my home and doomscrolling TikTok. There’s something comforting (if misleading) about the idea that you can scroll your way into preparedness.

Somewhere in there, I saw Reggie James’s tweet about the off season. He compares vacation to an ice bath. “The shock is good for the system,” he writes. “But you know you’re getting back to work soon.” I can’t remember the last time I came back from a vacation truly recharged. And while I don’t know what my next off season will look like, I suspect there’s still some work to do in how I relate to rest.

Reggie James@HipCityReg

ON EMBRACING “THE OFF SEASON” — Been thinking about intentional rest lately. Similar to the gym or a high performing athlete. You should think of career rest just as methodically Vacations are a sort of ice bath. The shock is good for the system. But you know you’re getting

6:40 PM · Nov 29, 2025 · 18.1K Views

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When we closed HAWRAF seven years ago, I took what I thought would be a productive break. Friends, classes, workshops, a weekend in Warsaw (where I also fell asleep mid-meal). I expected progress, results. All I got was a vague sense of direction. At the time, that felt insufficient. In retrospect, it was exactly what that season was for.

There’s been talk lately on media diets and consumption habits. One camp argues that prolific creatives are prolific consumers: the designer who’s scoured antique stores across countries, the musician who listens to albums like others scroll feeds. The other pushes for discipline: fewer inputs, more intention. Both have a point. What gets lost is the kind of consumption. One broadens your view, the other sharpens it.

A writing teacher once told me that consumption and creation are opposite ends of the same knob. You can’t turn both all the way up at once. The same is true of work and rest, of on seasons and off.

One thing I’ve noticed: More begets more. More scrolling leads to more scrolling. Writing leads to more writing. Doing, to more doing. Somewhere along the way, we started mistaking constant output for importance and consumption for preparation.

In October, a few other things converged. I left AIR after helping build its foundation, and started a role at OpenAI. Leaving was bittersweet. It’s hard to walk away just as something starts to solidify, but AIR is in excellent hands. Nicole Ripka, formerly of Betaworks, joined Collaborative Fund as an investor and director of AIR. I’m excited to see what she and the next cohort build. I’m grateful for the community that made this year and for how supportive they’ve been through it all.

Despite a quiet fourth quarter, we shipped a ton in 2025. We hosted events, fostered a community of folks passionate about building the future of design-led AI, and, yes, wrote more. Below are some of your most-read and most-discussed Good Graf! pieces. Consider them receipts or a reminder that output doesn’t require constant presence, just eventual return.

Thanks for reading. More soon(ish).

—Carly