A K-Shaped Year

It's not easy summing up — well, any year, really — but especially a year like 2025 has been in my life.

Since the sine wave that was 2023 and the broadly upward, though far less intense, trendlines of 2024, 2025 has yielded a rather starkly dichotomous path.

And so, much like talk of the ongoing "K-shaped" economic recovery, the line graph of my life feels like it has diverged into two different directions.  A lot of aspects of my life are going quite well right now, arguably better than they've ever been.  Others are truly not great, and arguably have never been worse.  That alone is bittersweet and more than a little frustrating.  But the biggest part of what has me leaving 2025 feeling so adrift is that everything seems flipped on its head.

It's incredibly disorienting, and frankly a bit unnerving, to find myself doing so well in areas where I've historically struggled while simultaneously doing so poorly where I've historically excelled.  Of course, I'm exceedingly grateful at every turn that it's not all bad news.  But the good gets better and the bad gets worse in seemingly equal measure lately.  So it's understandably hard to justify focusing on gratitude when there's still a lot of work to be done in turning half of my life right-side-up again.

And that kind of hints at the details behind the headline: It has been a full and busy year throughout, and nothing has been static for long.  The first quarter of my year was largely directed toward an increased spirit of volunteerism, while the second was about polishing skills for the betterment of community.  The third quarter was about scaffolding sustainability onto those skills while helping a friend through crisis.  And most recently, the fourth quarter has been focused more on equal parts personal and professional growth.

It's certainly not all been roses.  But there have been a lot of bright spots to keep me going.

Who knows what 2026 will bring?  All I know is it's about time to dive right in.

Random tangent: Mom retired on Friday 19 December! And her coworkers bought her an air fryer as a parting gift. She set it up tonight and used it for the first time to make some fries which were deliciously crispy!