2025 Recap

January

In January, I went for a 10km hike with a friend and set a new best for distance. I got new hiking boots, which helped a lot with increasing distance - that and wearing toe socks under my hiking socks.

I also finished this real jerk of a puzzle, which is all black. The shapes of the pieces were unique enough to make it slightly less painful to put together, but I did resort to using the “cheatsheet” - which literally just showed where the different shapes went, I still had to find them.

The evil Ravensburger black puzzle

Besides that, January is the month I went to Fiji and had an excellent time drinking far too much with my sister and then wrapping up my second last day by falling in the pool and grazing my hand which got badly infected. I now have a barely visible scar on my left hand from it - the nurses at my local medical centre did a great job ensuring it wouldn’t scar too badly. I talked a bit about my holidays in the mid-year review post as well.

February

In February, I hiked some more and also went for a 30km bike ride around Lake Burley Griffin on the mountain bike I bought last year. It was the first (and to date) only time I’ve used the new towball on my car - it looks pretty silly because I drive a VW Golf and the bike is almost as wide as my car.

I finally got some hexagonal shelves and felts I’d bought a few months before hung up on the wall in my study. It’s a place where I can put all my pins and knick-knacks. Below is a picture of the pins portion, since I don’t have a good picture of the whole thing. It makes me happy I can display them since I stopped putting them on my bag because they kept getting knocked off.

Wall of pins

I also took a two day watercolour workshop, which was super helpful in establishing some of the basic skills I was missing. I painted several things but I didn’t love how any of them came out, but the point wasn’t to make something pretty, it was to learn.

March

End of February and through to 10 March, my partner and I went to New Zealand and roadtripped around the South Island. It was a fantastic experience and something I’ll never forget. I found an amazing recipe for cheese scones when I got back and made a big batch after getting obsessed with them in NZ.

I got sick about a week after we got back from holiday and nothing else really got done except that I signed myself up for a 12km trail run when I couldn’t move from the couch for a few days.

April

Not a lot happened in April - just life, mostly. My partner and I went to Wollongong for an afternoon and poked around some local shops. There was another hike and I bought a 34" ultrawide off my manager who retired. I really liked it, way more screen real estate, though I had some problems running it at maximum resolution/refresh rate with the KVM I had.

May

I did another watercolour workshop in May - this time with a couple of my friends. This one really didn’t turn out great and I’m not sure what was going on with me that day, but I just wasn’t feeling it, I suspect because I didn’t sleep well the previous night.

Training for my trail run ramped up, but I’d also injured my knee a few months earlier and my physio recommended that I hike it rather than try to run.

June

I got a couple of hikes in before the trail run on the 15th. My original aim for the 12km trail run was to get in under 3 hours and I did manage it, despite all the troubles with my knees. I clocked in at 2:53:54 - one of the slowest people there, but well and truly smashed the goal I set when I thought I could run it.

I also recertified my RHCSA because it had lapsed in January and I was participating in another one of my work’s skills challenges. I only had to study for 2 weeks this time and I scored much higher. Something about having multiple more years of experience now, I suppose.

July

The most exciting things that happened in July was that I bought $20 of raffle tickets for a meat raffle at the club and being unsupervised, picked two whole platters of pork… about 2 days before I went to visit my parents. I went to visit them and stayed in a caravan park so that I wouldn’t be imposing upon my grandmother’s space.

I drove the 3 hours to my parents place, checked in at the van park… then realised I’d left my entire suitcase at home. I called my partner in a panic and we had to organise to meet halfway the next day. I had to buy some clothes to get me by for the night, but it was pretty embarrassing. Unfortunately, about halfway through the week, I started feeling a bit tired and rundown and by the time I got home, I was feeling very unwell and thus cold #2 for the year struck.

August

August is birthday month and my friends hosted a party for a bunch of us August babies - of which there are a surprising number. I made cheese scones again and they were a hit with the brisket one of my friends made for the main meal.

I took out my DSLR that weekend and took photos at the National Museum’s sculpture garden. It was lovely getting out for a walk on the foreshore and then having lunch afterwards. There was another hike in this month with friends.

Other than that, I bought myself a very big, very fancy monitor for my birthday - a Samsung Odyssey G9 OLED - it’s 49" wide and takes up the greater part of my desk. It’s been very nice for working from home and after some initial teething issues with gaming, I’ve figured out what works for me.

Samsung Odyssey G9 OLED taking up my entire desk

September

September involved another hike and another trip to see my parents - this time my partner drove and we stayed with her mother. We only stayed for the weekend but caught up with a bunch of people. Unfortunately, I also caught COVID from my niece, didn’t pick it up quick enough, and therefore I couldn’t get antivirals. Jen managed not to catch it despite my niece being very affectionate with her.

This was also the month that I finally got to see a cardiologist after waiting 6 months for an appointment. He diagnosed my dizzy spells as being POTS and so I’ve spent a lot of time trying to process that. Basically my life involves trying to consume a lot more salt than seems strictly healthy and managing my energy levels.

October

So, with catching COVID 2 weeks before PAX and the POTS diagnosis, I decided to apply for a medical badge. The main benefit of it was there were specific queues for me into the merch store and I was allowed into the hall 10 minutes before everyone else. This actually made it much easier for me to enjoy the convention because I’d pick one thing to do each morning I was there and then sit with my friends most of the rest of the day playing games and chatting unless there was a panel I wanted to go to.

Doom Slayer Beck

The biggest benefit of being able to get in early meant I was finally able to go to the miniature paint and take which has always been too busy for me to line up for because I’ve never really been able to stand in line for the time it takes to clear out. I got to paint for 40 minutes and it was so enjoyable, I bought a couple of minis from the convention, some paints on Amazon, and I’ve been enjoying it ever since. I alternate posting art with miniatures on my Instagram and each one is better than the last despite not trying to improve.

November

A month mostly filled with miniature painting and a few POTS flares - mostly the fatigue is getting to me. Probably just the last dregs of COVID dragging me down.

However, my partner and I did do a few things together - one of which was trying out rifle target shooting at a local gun club with some family friends of hers. I struggled with it a lot because I wasn’t exactly sure what I was allowed to touch/do. I ended up with a little bruise in my shoulder from the gun, which is funny, because it didn’t even kick back that hard.

We also had a little weekend away in Pambula. I picked it for its parkrun, but we found plenty to do, even though the weather was a bit crappy. Sunday morning, the weather cleared up and we got on a boat and spent two hours whale watching - we got to see multiple breaches and it was absolutely magical. Whales are majestic af.

December

We’re still early days in December but I’ve got some time off over Christmas and planning to see my family again closer to the end of the year (or early 2026). I also want to get a whole bunch of mini painting done. I’m trying out 3D printing some fun bases for them and it’ll be cool to see how they come out.

Goals Review

Exercise

Hike at least 100km over the course of the year.

This ended up somewhere around 90km - I could very well knock this off by the end of the year, but I’ve got no real plans to make it happen.

Cycle at least 150km over the course of the year.

61.3km… it just didn’t happen. With all my issues with dizziness and fatigue, it just didn’t seem sensible to push too hard.

Get under 100kg.

I did this one! I’m currently 96kg and very very happy to finally be safely under 100kg.

Drumming

Take a break from it. Play when I feel like it.

I have not sat down at my drumkit since the end of August. I have good intentions to do this but my energy levels just don’t seem to be allowing me to do everything I want.

Tech

Do that last 20% on Clockbridge to make it less ugly and fix the bugs.

I finally did this and it annoyed me a little bit, because I put around 2.5 hours into it, which drove it to conclusion. I even implemented a message queuing system which should cache the messages if my Elasticsearch instance becomes unavailable for any reason.

Take the RHCE with the skills challenge.

I managed to pass the RHCE in July.

Drawing

Get back into painting.

I did a few watercolour workshops, which were good. I did some of my own too, but the biggest way I got back into painting was taking up painting miniatures - it was very unexpected to me but it’s very relaxing because I’m not as invested in the end result.

Learn some CAD so I can play with the 3D printer more and make my own stuff.

I learned some Fusion! I created a stencil for watercolour swatches that I then 3D printed. My partner also asked me to design a clip that had broken on one of her retro computers - she ended up using it and it fixed the case nicely.

Reading

Originally, my reading goals were:

50 books
15,000 pages

Which after I smashed them out, I revised to:

100 books
25,000 pages

So far I’m at 92/100 books and 33,648/25,000 pages. So, I can’t be upset with that. I’m hoping I can knock over the last 8 books this month, but we’ll see. I’ve done a good job anyway.

Goals for 2026

I’ve decided that for 2026, I’m going to try to be a lot kinder to myself with the new reality of living with POTS and the energy limitations that come with that. I don’t have any tech goals because I’m currently satisfied with where I’m working and don’t feel much need to job hop.