End Of Another One

For my readers who have followed me here for years – thank you all! – you know my brain works in very linear/circular ways.[1] I’m very into the rhythms of the year: the flow from week-to-week, the changing of the seasons, when school begins and ends, etc. Something was ingrained in my brain when I was young, or perhaps I was just born that way. Regardless, the end of one calendar year and the beginning of the next has always struck me as an Event, even if we rarely actually celebrate the actual arrival of the New Year anymore.

So I can’t help but be reflective about everything that has transpired over the past 12 months.

For our family, 2025 was mostly good. I think L might argue a bit, given the offensive extra bone in her foot and how it wrecked much of her basketball year. Other than that, though, we were mostly healthy and successful.

M continued her race through college. Amazingly, she just has one “real” semester left, although she won’t graduate until the spring of 2027. She got her first co-op last summer, a major step in her life, which led to another that begins in two weeks. She moved off-campus. She stayed in Cincinnati for all of 2025, holidays and a couple weeks before her summer job began excepted. She’s had a boyfriend for over a year. 😬 She is doing very well.

C hung on and graduated from high school. She will be the first to admit that her high school years weren’t always the best, for a variety of reasons. But she persevered and closed that chapter in her life. She is off to a much better start at IU. We gave her grief this week that the class that kept her from having straight A’s was personal fitness. Then again, when she signed up for an 8 AM gym class, it was going to be a big ask for her to not sleep through a few. 😂 She’s made new friends, reconnected with some old ones, and while sometimes doing it in a different way than her mom and I would choose, is off to a good start in Bloomington.

L continues to do great academically, better grades through 2.5 years of high school than either of her sisters earned. She is a good friend and teammate, someone who others lean on in difficult moments. Basketball wasn’t always what she wanted it to be this year, but 2025 ended on a good run for her. She’s started to get an idea of what she wants to after graduating from high school in 18 months.

S and I are healthy, the most important thing we can say as we move into our mid–50s.[2] This year was the least we’ve traveled in ages, an anticipated effect of the kids being in our home less and less. We’ve made the first tentative plans for what happens when the kids aren’t coming home anymore. Or, rather, talked about what those plans might be.

The Pacers delighted us. The Colts teased us. The Hoosiers shocked us. The Jayhawks confounded me.

Lots of good music and books.

Our little bubble is good.

It was outside the bubble that was problematic in 2025. I don’t need to get into specifics, you all watch/read the news.

The long, slow slide into becoming a nation that doesn’t try to fix problems anymore but rather looks for someone to blame and believes that punishing them solves our issues was accelerated. More power than ever was accumulated in fewer hands than ever. The First Amendment was basically rendered impotent, any organization daring to dissent threatened with the full, punitive powers of the Federal government. So much of the new technologies pushed on us are aimed more at distracting and controlling us than helping us. Our government and highest tiers of our business world are hyper-focused on pushing half-baked ideas that have a clear end in rendering broad swaths of our workforce redundant, not to mention the potentially dire effects on our environment and resources.

It’s tough with children who will be looking to start their careers soon to not be afraid of how their options will be much more limited than when I began working. And to wonder if they should want to start families when they are ready.

I don’t care who you voted for, you can’t look at the trajectory we are on and believe it ends in a good place. And, sadly, I think so much of this is being baked into the system that even an electoral change in 2026 or 2028 won’t be enough to fully reverse course. I used to believe in the slogan Love Wins. Even if it was a bit banal. These days, I’m not so sure…

Well, that’s a fun way to end the year!

I am extraordinarily thankful for those of you who check in here, no matter how frequently/infrequently. It is definitely a form of therapy for me, even if most of the things I write about are trivial.

Happy New Year to you all.