Best of 2025

a still lake reflects the trees, sky, and clouds like a mirror
I suppose this is my favourite photo of the year, a snap of Mundy Lake on my iPhone while walking with a friend. Perfect blend of photographic serendipity and symmetry.

End of the year round-up time. Personal highlights for me include going full-time consultant, PfP✨, buying our first house, travelling to Quebec and Ontario, and going on meditation retreat. Seeing my daughters perform in the city dance festival and high school musical were proud Papa™ moments. And meeting a ton of excellent, amazing, inspiring people along the way — too many to list here, you know who you are!

Other than the personal stuff, 2025 had a lot of community organizing. I wrote an annual roundup for DWeb Vancouver. I wouldn’t be surprised if we end up doing more in 2026. That community is really growing! And we started another group, the Meetup Meetup which is having their second meeting January 19th 2026.

Rounding up a whole year of adventures is pretty daunting, so I am going to fall back on my most recent framework of Best of Reading, Best of Watching, and 40 Questions.

40 Questions

Another year, another opportunity to look back and answer Steph Ango’s 40 Questions. Some highlights I can share:

Did you keep your new year’s resolutions?

I think I did 2.3 out of 17 😅

One of those goals was to go to 2 conferences. I went to 8. I got my list for 2026 started already so let me know if we can meet up somewhere.

The other two (partial) successes were go on retreat (which I did), and get a dental implant (I had the first of three surgeries towards this on just two weeks ago, so I am on the way! 🦷)

The failures were things like “get a dog”, “lose 5 kilos”, and “try therapy… maybe” 😅

Did anyone close to you give birth?

Yes! One of my best friends had their first baby after a lot of trying. Very happy for them.

What was the best thing you bought?

House, for sure.

What did you do on your birthday?

Sadly stared at a lake on a cloudy day. Haha.

Who was the best new person you met?

Too many to choose from!

What is a quote that sums up your year?

“Fault-finding is not wisdom”

Best of Reading

One of my failed 2025 goals was to read a lot more papers than books. To this effort I set my To Read target to half my normal goal = 20 books. However, I ended up joining two book clubs and reading 38 books 😅 and that includes nearly two Malazan books that on page-count alone should easily push me over the 40 books mark. The simple breakdown is 21 fiction and 17 non-fiction.

In 2026 I would like to migrate my reading tracking and chapter notes to something ATproto based and finally get off of Goodreads. I have been watching that ecosystem for a while, but it is time to commit to something.

There are no “best” books, just ones that give you a great reading experience. Here are my notable books of the year:

Fiction

Despite the fact that I read 6(!) books by Joe Abercrombie, and finished the 10th volume of The First Law Series, I won’t pick any of those excellent books which gave me a lot of reading pleasure… and actually I picked them last year 😅.

So I would like to turn your attention to House of the Rain King by Will Greatwich, first novel (!) which you can buy off his site. Here is my quick little review:

Wonderful world-building saturated with details like a vivid Ghibli movie, soaked in themes of obligation: the debt, oaths, contracts, and duty that we have towards our communities and the land, and when we need to break those constraints in order to heal.

Non-Fiction

I did a lot of reading about AI this year. Unfortunately I did not write a lot of book reviews. But you can see my chapter notes on Goodreads. Ways of Being: Animals, Plants, Machines: The Search for a Planetary Intelligence by James Bridle expanded how I thought about intelligence in the first place. Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI by Karen Hao confirmed my worst suspicions about the AI hyperscalers. But it was The AI Mirror: How to Reclaim Our Humanity in an Age of Machine Thinking by Shannon Vallor which showed the way to ethically approach AI that influenced my thinking the most. I went back to that book multiple times and recommended it a lot this year

Buddhism

Books on Buddhism is the third genre of reading that I do and this year I read two bangers that I would like to share: What Comes Before Mindfulness?: Right Effort and the Buddhist Path to Enlightenment by my teacher, Ajahn Sona; and Awakening from the Daydream: Reimagining the Buddha’s Wheel of Life by David Nichtern.

The former I read through slowly and highlighted a ton, and it changed the way I think of meditation. It is his best book I think, and well recommended if you want to get into the 6th of the Noble Eightfold Path.

The latter I picked up because it was short and wanted to listen to something while traveling on trains and buses in Quebec. I knew of David Nichtern, but I did not expect this book to be a good as it is! The audiobook is narrated by the authour and is very accessible. If you are looking for something a little deeper than a dhamma talk or podcast, but don’t want to commit to listening to something massive like the Middle Length Discourses, then try dipping your toes in this.

Best of Watching

Only 13 films this year (and 4 in December!). Each year I seem to watch less and less, and this year I got trapped into watching a lot of Reactors on YouTube, which is basically like emotional crack and probably not a good practice. Anyways, the standout film for the year is K-Pop Demon Hunters, which must count for like an extra +10 since I watched so many Movie Reactors react to it. When the trailer came out my whole family gathered around to watch (we have a lot of K-Pop fans under this roof), so we watched it all together on the big couch in front of the new television together.

For TV I didn’t watch much. I will finish Pluribus this week which is interesting, but I was all about Andor Season 2 when it dropped. I watched that religiously week-to-week, listening to the podcasts and talking about it with my friends.

But that is about it for watching. Next year I think I will get off of reactors and explore more cinema, a pursuit I have had on my spare resolutions list for many years.

The Numbers for 2025

🖋 28 long-form posts on the blog

✉️ 12 email monthly newsletters sent

📸 1,714 photos and vids on Flickr

📚 38 books read

🎞 13 films watched

🧘 647 day meditation streak maintained

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