I’m doing another year-end-review like I did at the end of 2023. Instead of a 2024 wrapup, I blogged about the year of music I enjoyed. This year is a little different, because I didn’t post a blog once. Of course, I intended to, but never got around to doing it. All the while, I did other things to fill up the time, as I will share below. But shortly after the clock struct midnight and all the confetti from Time’s Square was being swept up, something changed in me.

A bout of depression

Somehow, lining up perfectly on New Year’s Day, I began panicking. On my way home from photographing NYE in Time’s Square (see my colleague’s great photos here), I was reading a piece by Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker. Gopnik is a staff writer there, and happened to write the leading Talk of the Town article for the December 30, 2024, & January 6, 2025, double issue titled “As if Times Weren’t Unsettling Enough, Saturn Is Losing Its Rings“.

I can feel my blood pressure elevate rereading and revisiting this time. Allow me to now go over my existential terror experience. Reading the article, I learned that Saturn’s rings will fade, with an expectancy that it’ll take 200 million years to fully extinguish. That timeline of hundreds of millions of years made me think, “Oh god, I’m going to be dead by then.” That was the moment I really internalized that we all die. And it sucked.

Me, my parents, my cats, all dead eventually. What does it mean to stop experiencing? I asked myself. I tried picturing the absence of the concept, and came away terrified. These thoughts spiraled. “How soon am I going to die? My cats? My parents? What will I do if they all die?” These thoughts devastated me, throwing me into a well so deep that I couldn’t see sunlight anymore. (It didn’t help that it was the middle of winter, literally on the darkest days.)

I wrote a bit about it, in a draft blog post circa February: “Year to date, I’ve been fucked up. There have been bad days, decent days, and terrible days. There are hours when I’m feeling alright, and hours where I cower. Moments where I’m all right, and then I’m overtaken by intruding thoughts.” It never was published, but I still have it. That, and another piece that I wrote around the same time, likely a week earlier.

Ending the year, I’m thankful to my support network. My caring parents helped me, and so did my loving friends. My reliable psychiatrist, who I called pretty much immediately, changed my medication and referred me to a therapist who I now have biweekly(-ish) sessions with. My wonderful ex, who helped a lot even though we weren’t dating anymore. And of course, my cats, whose physical presence upon taking a trip to my parents soothed me, and whose radical indifference to me and everyone else was comforting.

The depression was out of nowhere. On my previous medication, I’d been going smooth for eight plus years. My living arrangement was stable, and all my relationships were, too. Reading that article just… took me out. KO’d me.

For weeks afterward, I had been so depressed. And paralyzed with fear. I didn’t have the motivation to go out on my own that much. Baths were frequent. And so were candles. And Hotel Mira. (Great band btw.)

Getting out was a slow process. The people above, plus time, healed me. Zohran Mamdani won the Democratic primary for Mayor in June, and that propelled me with excitement in the hopes of a better future.

Months have gone by that I haven’t felt anything close to what I felt then. My medication dosage was even reduced to a third of what was set for me, and I feel great. I made a full recovery from this, and I’m so thrilled to be back to my usual self, if not better. All in all, it was at most a few months of feeling really down and scared, but never that I wanted to harm myself—quite the opposite. (Really, really the opposite of that!)

The depression was a major event this year. And though nothing quite overshadows it, it wasn’t the only thing that is worth mentioning.

Healthy mind, body, and me

In the depression, I decided to start eating more healthy and go to the gym. Sweetgreen was my big spend in the first few months of the year, and then I decided it was getting to expensive, and started making my own salads. (My roommate was disgusted by the tuna I put in it.) I never made a habit of exercising: I always wanted to be very masculine and buff, but never put in the work to get anywhere.

For much of the year, I had a good routine on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoons. Gains are excitingly visible: I’m trimmer and have less belly fat, almost to the point that my abs can be seen. Never having defined biceps before, it’s crazy to look over at my arms and see some freaky lump inside.

My Apple Watch catalogues my exercises. Compared to 2024, on average, it reports me burning around 120 more calories per day; 2,000 more steps per day; and walking and running nearly an extra mile a day. Wow! My weight went down some (mostly to me not being able to stomach much at the start of the year) and has since stayed steady as I simultaneously trim down and build muscle.

The Army Fitness Test is not a multistage aerobic capacity test that progressively gets more difficult as it continues. But it is cool to know that I can pass it.

I now look a lot more like Link from Breath of the Wild, so, hashtag goals?

Let’s not forget about Euclid

Yes, let’s not forget. It’s been six years since I started it, and 2025 was the year that things were polished and refined. It’s in a state that I can announce that Euclid Editor will be releasing in March 2026. A behemoth of an application is coming your way, in just a few months!

I have one last component of the app to get working. Once that’s finished, it’ll be on to my testers (read: friends) who will report crashes and severe errors before a 1.0 launch. Get excited! I’ll be publishing a series of teaser videos and promotional material up to the release. Much to share.

A note about Euclid Editor, briefly. It’ll be priced between $40 and $60 for a license to use, and remain closed-source. Probably start at a lower price and then get to the higher one once things are smoothed over. Living costs money, and I want to use that money to hire other developers to also contribute to other (open-source) Minecraft-related things.

Other bits and bobs

Games

Not very many games played. Lotta VRChat this year, though. I’m glad Steam isn’t giving me the amount of hours I played it. I played through Stray (2022), and have had a blast playing Battlefield 6 and its open playtest. My friend Swifter & co. made a fantastic Beat Saber mod called Vivify. God, it’s good.

Movies

Not so many movies this year, either. Notable standouts are Sinners, a VRChat documentary called The Reality of Hope, Hedda, Wicked: For Good, and, my favorite of this year, Avatar: Fire and Ash. I want to see more movies next year. And rewatch Fire and Ash.

Music

Thank you, Spotify, for inventing statistics. 12,778 minutes. Top genres indie rock and indie electronic. Hotel Mira’s “Dancing With The Moonlight” at #1. DBMK’s “I Heard You Had a Girlfriend” at #2 and “Tearsoaked Baby” at #5. Acloudyskye’s “Downfall” at #3, and Sad Alex’s “New Heartbreak” at #4. My most-listened to album was Blood Rushing Like Current Through A Powerline by Acloudyskye, who was also the artist I listened to most.

Writing

I did do some writing this year. I wrote a few articles for the English Wikinews, and some other freelance pieces that aren’t bylined by ‘SWinxy’. Wikipedia has been a COVID hobby but that took a backseat to Euclid this year. I want to revisit it, because I know a lot of the people I met are still there, and I want to help them again.

Lastly, hi

Whoever is reading this, hi. I haven’t written a blog post in a year. But thank you for making it to the end of this one. There will be more. See you in 2026, and I hope it’s good. We’re all praying he croaks, yeah? (OF OLD AGE.)