In my last life update on here, I ended it with a lot of hope and excitement. In a lot of ways that ended up being accurate, for a short time. The last 4 months of the year, however have been hell. I’m not sure how to really write through all of this without getting overly personal, but I will try. This post is about my entire year though, so I will go over the highlights of my whole 2025.
Spring
The biggest focus of the first quarter was Galaxy Bound, my Star Wars podcast. We finished up our reviews of Skeleton Crew in January, and then straight into a ton more content to cover like Star Wars Celebration, Revenge of the Sith 20th anniversary, and Andor season 2 reviews. It felt like there was so much to cover and was a ton of fun getting together to do that. If you aren’t a huge Star Wars fan already, the podcast probably isn’t for you, as we do some pretty deep dives. But if you are interested in reading about it, give this a read. After Andor, the Star Wars news slowed down to a trickle, so we went back to doing pre-planned discussions, which is still a lot of fun too.
Confusingly, I have another podcast that is kind of on the backburner lately, but it’s called Among the Noise. It’s more focused on generic topics like video games, movies, and TV. I started it with my buddy David, and we went for about a year until a long hiatus. In March of this year we attempted to return, with a really good episode, and followed it up later in June with one more. Unfortunately we never got back to doing another one this year, and a lot of that is just my fault. Doing two podcasts is a lot of time and energy when you’re the sole producer. Among the Noise isn’t dead, but it’s definitely not our focus right now. Which is sad, because I enjoy it a lot. I’m hoping we get at least one episode done in 2026 too. That’s the low bar to meet.
I really wanted to get new music out there this year, but was really struggling with getting anything written. Sometimes I just get massive writer’s block, mostly due to lack of motivation for it. Not because I’m lazy but because I have so many other projects I have my focus on instead, like the podcast. I decided to take an existing song and give it a bit of a new production pass. I went with my favorite song from my first album called “I’m Left here Sinking” and added some new guitars and a few other additions, and completely re-mixed and mastered it. I think it elevated it to a new level enough that I ended up releasing it as a single. It was a fun process, but unfortunately it didn’t really get me back into making new content like I hoped it would.
Summer
As summer quickly approached, Galaxy Bound was slowing down a bit. I continued to tinker around with new music, but nothing to completion. A lot of my focus in the early summer was working on the website CMS I’ve been building from scratch in just pure PHP and JavaScript, using ChatGPT to help me when I get stuck. They call that “vibe coding” now, apparently, which gets a lot of eye rolls from professional developers that think you should learn things like they did. But using ChatGPT is such a god-send, as long as you know it’s limits and you know enough to recognize when it’s wrong. The ultimate goal is to recreate JKHub.org’s current software. Right now we are needing to pay an absurd amount of money for a dying community that rarely gets donations these days, so I wanted to see if I could make at least the basics we need on my own, to save money going into the future. It has gone really well and honestly throughout this year I have it nearly completed. I’m just kind of waiting for the current software to completely break without renewing the license before I go full steam ahead and get it transferred to the new one. For now though, I do have a few live websites running versions of my system, including this website. This blog system and entire website is made by me from scratch, and it has a control panel login where you write the blogs and post them, etc. It’s simple, and I’m constantly adding and improving it. The other one that has the file sharing system similar to JKHub’s is DeltaStyles.com. That is the true testbed because it’s a thriving community that uses it, and is even now featured in an app in the Apple App Store called Manic Emulator. I’ve partnered with their development team to load the website when people are looking for controller skins.
In my last life update in July, I closed it out by hinting at good things to come, and was hopeful and excited for the second half of the year. That was because I had met someone and fell hard for her. The remainder of that summer was the happiest I had been in a very, very long time. I hadn’t been in a serious relationship like this in nearly 6 years. It was going extremely well. I noticed things were moving pretty fast, but I think a lot of that comes with our age and past experience. It wasn’t fast in a bad way, from within the relationship itself. But there were external factors that played a huge role in the relationship coming to a very abrupt end.
Fall
I’m not going to reveal the juicy details of my breakup here. It would be in bad taste. I’m focusing on how it affected me. The entire fall of 2025 was completely misery for me. Anyone that knows me, knows I love hard. It’s not something I can control easily, it’s just who I am. Normally this is seen as a good thing, and it definitely is, but when it is forced to stop, it’s like a hard crash coming down from a high. It’s literally debilitating, and it’s kind of wild to me that more people don’t experience or talk about it. Perhaps I’m just the weird one. I thought each breakup I went through would be easier and easier, but I’ve found that to kind of be false, at least in the direct aftermath of it. Maybe it’s because I get so hopeful that this will be the one, finally. I’m not sure.
This is the worst time of the year to go through a fresh breakup, too. All of the fun holidays were coming up, and things we had plans to do for them were now out the window. We had planned to go to each others’ families’ holiday get-togethers, so when they finally arrived it was really hard.
This was fuel for my creative brain though. I wrote, recorded, edited, mixed, mastered, and released a song the quickest I had ever done. The song is called “Losing Ground” and is purely inspired by a portion of events of my heartbreak. I think it turned out great, and I’m proud of it. It’s not quite a depressing breakup song like you’d expect. It has some hints of positivity. Ultimately I was just really happy to finally get a new song out there, and it fueled some more that I hope to have out there soon next year.
Winter
As I said, it’s a terrible time to be dealing with a breakup during the holiday season, but also because the days are so short. That plays a huge factor in just overall attitude, behavior, and outlook on life. The sun really does fuel our happiness, so when the sun sets at 5pm, it just feels like it’s time to lay on the couch and not do anything until the sun comes up again. Add depression and sadness to that, and you’re having just a terrible time. Luckily, Christmas is my favorite season of the year, so all of that helps keep the mood up, just a bit. I didn’t end up doing anything special for Christmas this year, but it was a good time with the family on the days we got together.
I’m writing this on December 31st. I have no idea where my life is going in 2026. I’d like to think good things await. I’d like for the bare minimum to be no heartbreak, at least, please. I saw a quote recently that said something like “If there is a higher power out there trying to teach me lessons, please stop. I need a break.” It’s not a philosophical question, it’s supposed to be a joke, but damn did I feel that. Sometimes it feels like I’m having the carrot dangled in front of me to get me to a point of happiness and to see a glimpse of what I could have, only for it to be yanked away, stomped on, eaten in front me, and spat back out in my face. The more times it happens and the more time that passes makes it harder to keep my head above the ground. It’s hard to keep what I want in clear view anymore, or at all.
Here’s to the lessons I did learn this year though. I learned things about myself through all of this. I learned that I was ready for a life I didn’t think I ever would have. I learned that my love for someone can go deep enough to forgive the worst acts. I learned despite my deep love I can have for someone and can sometimes let my heart on my sleeve when I’m hurting, I’m more emotionally resilient than I thought. I’m not perfect by any means, and I’ve made mistakes by reacting in the moment. But I’d like to think my reactions are extremely mild compared a lot of people. Not that comparison to worse behavior is a healthy metric to follow, nor does it excuse anything I’d said in those moments. I never leave those moments without deep regret or an apology if I can help it, and always have the goal of never letting it happen again. I’m just really hoping I didn’t subconsciously learn to never fully trust someone again or to not let someone get close to me again. It’s a tempting resolution to avoid getting hurt again. But I also know that I’d rather risk getting hurt again than never being loved or trusted again.
The end of this post went in a direction I didn’t expect. I’m not sure who will read this in the future besides maybe myself. I’m sure I’ll always look back on this year as bittersweet. The bitter may outweigh the sweet, but at least I learned things. Another thing I’ve learned is trying to predict the future is a fool’s errand. It’s hard not to try to see where you’ll be months or years from now. It’s exciting, especially in a relationship. It’s just never guaranteed, good or bad. Things can always change, people can change. People can be forgiven for mistakes but still not change, or vice versa. Life is ever changing, love is hard, and time moves on.