Honestly 2025 kind of sucked, but lets recap anyway.

Family

See Failure to Blog

My father in laws health continues to decline. After his hernia surgery he’s had a series of infections that are killing him. I thought he might die this December but he hangs on. They’ve switched up some his medications and he seems to be doing a little better. There’s hope he could gain back some health so all is not lost. But it is still painful for my wife and kids.

The traumatic event of June is past but the affects still linger. Day to day things are fine, but I’m not sure we’ve really addressed the problem.

My daughters continue to grow up.

• Char is hopefully going to get her drivers license this year in March.
• Claire is picking her college, she really wants to go to University of Wisconsin Madison.
• Madelyn has a summer internship and may live with her boyfriend in Chicago this summer.

I’ve tried to spend more time with my Mom and Dad this year. I succeeded with my mother as she’s more available. Dad not so much. A good friend lost his parents this last year. It made me realize my time left with my parents is shorter then I’d like.

Work

I left Equinix for Tigris in April see: Equinix EOF

This has been a good change as I found working at Equinix a waste of time. The downside to this change is I work a lot more. Sometime over 55 hours a week. Its been hard to balance work and my personal obligations and a desire for some hobbies outside of work. I’m going to stay at Tigris as long as I can as I’m not ready to join the AI workforce yet and I think Tigris remains a place thats ok to weather this storm at. But it is still stressful.

I do like the work most of the time. Its fun being at a startup. I can do anything there. This fall I went to Kubecon and was part of the sales booth. Which wasn’t something I’d ever thought I’d do.

In 2026 I hope I continue to contribute to Tigris and we can continue to grow. I’ve not done much coding there, but maybe 2026 will be my year for this.

Health

I’m 188 lbs, a full four pounds over last year. When I visited my doctor he pointed out my consistent weight gain over the last 4 years. He told me it was ok because old people gain weight. I’m not ready to gain weight or think of myself as old yet.

Doing regular back exercises seems to be helping with my back pain. I had a massive neck pain episode in February but I think some of that was stress related. I modified my exercises a bit to also work on my neck a bit and I think its helping.

I continue to avoid the news and politics. I’ve found its better for my mental health to not waste my brain space on it.

Hobbies

I read six books in 2025, the least number of books I’ve read in a year in a long time. When you only read six there’s not much to say about ranking them. Probably the one I remember reading the most was The Nvidia Way. Fortunately none of the books I read this year were “bad” books.

I took a step back from sailing club a bit this year due to personal issues. I only taught sailing one day this summer. I can’t say I missed it much. Teaching sailing is draining and time consuming. Through an odd twist I did complete my US Sailing Small Boat Instructor Certification. It was a slog but I got through it. I’m not the greatest sailing instructor but I’m good enough.

I was the LDSC Treasurer this year. Learning the financial workings of the club was interesting. It was a bit time consuming at times, but nothing at the same level as teaching sailing school.

My own boat was left on shore until late August. I sailed the fall season at LDSC. Honestly I stalled out as a sailor. I enjoy it and it gives me a social outlet but its hard to balance spending time on boat with all my personal commitments (work & family). I’m not sure how much time I’ll have for it in 2026 either. I hope to make some time for it. But I think its the first thing to cut when time gets tight.

Tech

I finally updated some of my “home lab” and this blog is finally served using TLS. Working at the startup made me better at not doing things “perfect” so I’m more comfortable just hacking away in the home lab. I even switched from Bind9 to PowerDNS and wrote some ansible for things.

I’ve stalled out a bit as a coder. The new job mostly has me focused on deployment and configuration, which means I have very little time for coding. I was never very good at it, but I’m not getting better which is a mild regret for me. AI coding is changing software development I’m hopeful I will adapt. Maybe AI is the crutch I always needed as I’m not a write a bunch of code quickly kind of guy.

Goals and looking forward to 2026

I’ve not updated my personal journal in over a year. I wanted to do this in 2025 and failed. I’ll be surprised if I revive it in 2026. I have started keeping weekly TODO lists again. I think work being so high pressure forces me to make these lists so I don’t forget to do things so maybe the quarterly journal will come back.

In my 2024 retrospective I wrote:

I think 2025 will be a less stressful then 2024. I think between changing jobs, my father in law’s health and the election I was carrying a lot more stress then I realized. This had some negative impacts on my physical health. I was eating more and gaining weight. My mental health I was struggling to focus. I’m hopeful to change jobs in 2025 but I think this will be less stressful then it was in 2025 and my father in laws health seems to be good in the near term.

This was wrong, 2025 sucked and was massively stressful. Unfortunately I don’t think 2026 will be better, maybe different but not better. My father in law is still struggling and I’ll be graduating and sending my middle daughter Claire to college. This will not be easy.

I think 2026 will be a year of just keeping on I want to:

• Do a good job at Tigris and continue to help build that business
• Take care of my wife and daughters. Get Claire to College
• Build up my relationship with my parents.
• Have some time for friends and hobbies

I don’t know if I can do all four, but I will try.

I think you can only focus on so many things at once. If you’re juggling too many balls you are bound to drop one. I think my goal for 2026 is to enjoy it more and just keep on keeping on. You can put a lot of pressure on yourself, sometimes pressure builds diamonds but often it just grinds you to dust. I don’t want to be dust, so I’m going to lighten up the pressure a bit.

Here’s to a successful 2026!