Hello, fellow humans. Every year around this time, I think to myself, “I’d better get busy on my customary end-of-year blog post. And come to think of it, I ought to start posting, like, regularly, because I have so much to say!”
However, as I’ve mentioned before in connection with other blogging efforts—and this is equally true for social media—I’m too busy experiencing life to document it too. I cannot and do not multitask. My brain can deal with only one thing at a time, and practically speaking, that usually means one thing per day. Some days, the thing is writing a book, fixing a bug, or performing some other business-related task. Other days, the thing is shopping, shoveling snow, or, you know, writing an end-of-year blog post. If blogging were my actual profession, then fine, that would be my thing most days. But it’s just another task on my carefully curated but absurdly long to-do list, and it’s behind all the things that are mandatory. However much I may hope or intend to power through all the obligatory tasks so that I can have “free” time for the optional ones, I can’t quite envision, given my finite resources, how that could happen anytime soon.
I gave up on New Year’s resolutions a long time ago. More recently, I gave up on goals, period. (Don’t look at me like that. I mean it in a positive way!) Of course, there are plenty of things I’d like to accomplish some day. But goals don’t change the way my brain works. Every day, I’m going to do as much as I can to care for my family, earn money, and tend to my body and mind as I work my way through the “must do” things on my list. That’s just always going to happen. If I get too little sleep (more likely than not) or fall ill or encounter some crisis that demands lots of attention, then I’ll be less effective and make less progress that day. But the following day, once again, I’ll do my best. Repeat indefinitely.
Having a goal changes nothing about that process for me, except making me feel guilty or weak or inadequate for not having magically caused more hours to appear in my day, or not somehow managing to do things just as well but twice as fast, when I inevitably fail to do x of y in time z. So, when someone asks (as my son Soren did yesterday) what my expectations are for the coming year, I can’t rattle off specific plans or objectives. I hope I will have the strength and willpower to work as hard as I can every day. I hope my to-do list gets shorter with each passing week, and that I have fewer distractions and interruptions than I did this past year. Beyond that, whatever happens, happens—goal or not. That doesn’t mean I’m happy no matter the circumstances, but it does improve my mental state to be able to separate that which is in my control from that which is not.
As I look back over the past year, I can (and will) rattle off a bunch of events that were significant to me. They may not be interesting to anyone else. This is a personal blog, not a topical blog. There are no ads or sponsors here and I’d be insulted if someone ever called me an influencer. I’m only ever going to write about things I consider interesting for whatever reason.
The thing is, although I think of myself as a generalist, most people see me through one lens or another that focuses on a specific area and leaves the rest fuzzy. My family interacts with me as a husband, dad, son, or whatever and tends to lose interest when I start talking about my work or other activities they’re not directly involved in. People who know me as a technology author probably imagine that writing (and running Take Control Books) is my whole life, which is laughably far from the truth. My tai chi students are casually aware of my day job and my family, but our interactions are almost entirely about tai chi. And so on. (For everyone who says, “Wait, you also teach tai chi?” there’s someone who says, “Wait, you also write books?”. Where are you going? Don’t you want to hear about my garden? The years I lived in France? My technique for patching drywall? My political opinions? My chocolate chip cookie recipe?)
So, with the reminder that you can stop reading right now if you’re not digging this, here are what I think of as this past year’s highlights:
- As I mentioned back in March, I became a Canadian citizen this year. I even got to vote in my first Canadian election! I am thrilled to be officially Canadian. And, although the current political leadership in Saskatchewan is awful, I enjoy basically everything else about living here in Saskatoon. Despite having resisted moving here for decades, I’m just delighted to call this city (and country) home. You should come visit some time when you’re on your way to (checks map) OK it’s not on the way to anywhere, but still, a fine destination.
- I got Invisalign this year. I had braces as a kid, but the orthodontist did a terrible and incomplete job, and I’ve wanted to fix those faults for the past 45-ish years. (And, of course, things got even worse on their own over that time.) It’ll take another year and a half or so, and then I have to have a crown replaced, but it feels great to finally be ridding myself of a nearly lifelong annoyance.
- Our family took a summer road trip through southern Saskatchewan, where we saw sites such as Cypress Hills, Fort Walsh, the T. Rex Discovery Centre, Grasslands National Park, and dozens of ghost towns along the Ghost Town Trail. It was all so cool. (And, we got to see actual topography, in contrast to the tedious flatness of this part of the province.)
- I wrote a few books (Take Control of DEVONthink 4, Take Control of MailMaven, and Take Control of Tahoe) and updated a bunch of others, wrote the official documentation for MailMaven, edited and published numerous books by other authors, launched Take Control Premium, and did quite a lot of infrastructure work on the Take Control Books website.
- I continued teaching tai chi. Over the summer, when it was nice outside, we did the sword form in my back yard. So much fun. (Yes, I know how to wield a sword. Really.)
- My wife, Morgen, started on her MFA program in poetry at the University of Saskatchewan, an undertaking I enthusiastically support. She had poems accepted for publication in two magazines, and is working very hard on her craft. In January she’ll also start working as a T.A.
- Our son Devin, about whom I’ve written a great deal in previous years (see: 2024, 2022, 2021, December, 2020, July, 2020) has made amazing progress. He’s now 11 and still nonspeaking, but thanks to an excellent psychiatrist (and excellent drugs) and wonderfully supportive schools, his most worrying behaviours (such as head banging and constant shrieking) have disappeared, he’s moving steadily along the path to being fully toilet-trained, and most importantly of all, he’s happy nearly all the time. He’s loving and affectionate and much more willing to learn, pay attention, and go with the flow than he ever has been before. This is terrific for him, and for us, too!
- His older brother, Soren, was accepted into the prestigious Saskatoon Youth Orchestra, just one of five musical groups he’s part of this year. He plays clarinet, tenor sax, and piano, and I’m incredibly proud of him. He’s also doing fantastically well in school, has a large group of close friends, and is now getting into baking. And on top of all that, he’s just incredibly kind, moral, and self-aware. I have the best kids.
Still, 2025 was a weirdly difficult year. A lot of that is down to events in the United States. I’m sure you don’t need still more rehashing and commentary about that, but suffice it to say it has sucked for a lot of people, even people living in other countries. It’s hard to think clearly or focus on work with all that stuff going on. (And, I mean, it obviously wasn’t just the U.S.; Gaza and Ukraine, in particular, have consumed a lot of my emotional energy.)
Even apart from all that, things were weird. My year got off to a great start, work-wise, with things disappearing from my to-do list left and right. Then I got involved in two gigantic projects that, to put it as neutrally as possible, consumed vastly more of my time than I ever could have imagined. They got done, and there was money attached to them, so in a sense it’s all good. But because they took so long, progress on everything else slowed dramatically, so I’m now many months behind on everything else, and unhappy about it.
We also had our basement renovated, which was supposed to take just a few weeks but ended up taking more than six months and coming in way over budget. That was hugely disruptive, though it does improve our quality of life.
Meanwhile, Morgen’s MFA program put a lot of time pressure on the rest of the family. We had a respite worker lined up to care for Devin while Morgen was in class, but she had to bow out due to the death of a close friend. Then we found another person…who also had to drop out. (This is an oversimplification of a long story, but our luck with respite workers has been like Spinal Tap’s luck with drummers.) So, we didn’t have the help we needed to relieve that extra pressure.
And our cat, Zora, died this fall at age 21. That wasn’t really unexpected—she was super old for a cat and had been ill for a long time, but it was still a blow.
In short, we’ve had, and continue to have, some stress and sadness. Maybe there will be less in 2026. A pleasantly surprising thing could happen any time and dramatically turn things around.
Maybe it will happen tomorrow.
Still reading? That’s awesome, and thank you. Just curious, though: Who are you? I have no idea who reads (or, better yet, appreciates) this stuff. If you do, it would be great if you told me (publicly, using the comments, or privately, using the contact form). Maybe we could be friends. Surprising things happen all the time.
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