2025: A Year of Waiting

One aspect of New Year celebrations, both secular and religious, is reflecting upon the year past. For several years now I've shared my annual retrospective on my blog. It's time to do that with my retrospective on 2025. As usual I've spent a few days composing my thoughts for this retrospective. That's why I'm posting it now, on January 4, instead of at 12:17am on the 1st. 😅

One of the things I've pondered over the past few days is what's an appropriate title for 2025. A few years ago I looked back at the malaise that hung over 2023 like a cloud of impending doom that shrouded all the good things that happened; I called it 2023: The Year that Was. When 2024 continued that trend as another year of constant worry that a downtown that never actually came was always only a few months away I titled it 2024: Another Year that Was.

I considered using the same moniker again for 2025— because it feels like it was another "Meh" year— but I really dislike the trilogy naming. It makes it seem like some completely uncreative Hollywood movie sequel slop. Instead I'm giving 2025 a name that reflects a related but different gloom. 2025: A Year of Waiting.

Waiting for Illness to End

A lot of the waiting I did this year was waiting for illness (or its relative, inability) to end. Indeed, I almost chose 2025: Being Sick Sucks as the theme for this retrospective. That name was only runner-up because being sick was more my spouse's story than mine. Though I spent time sick, too— or standing by or supporting her while she was sick.

• We were both sick to start the year in January after our star-crossed trip to Panama in Dec. 2024. While my sickness really only kicked in on the very last day of the trip as we were flying home and lasted a bit over a week into January, Hawk's sickness started during the trip and lasted into February. And it wasn't just one health issue but at least two.


• One of those sicknesses was what I believe was a case of Norovirus Hawk's doctors refused to test for. They hand-waved it off as "traveler's diarrhea". But it lasted for 6 weeks! And at the same time she had a 2nd degree burn that took several weeks to heal. We lost 2 months to no travel because of these.


• In May Hawk had food poisoning. And I don't mean an "Oh, I got sick after eating something and then slept it off" case of food poisoning. I mean, "Vomiting uncontrollably for 12 hours and then too weak and in pain to leave bed for days" level of food poisoning.


• In June I had bronchitis and a cold that lasted almost two weeks. Hawk caught it, too, from me. We canceled a four-day holiday trip because of it.


• In September Hawk broke one of her toes. Thankfully it was a small toe and a small/simple break, but still: it meant more trips canceled.


• In October Hawk had a planned surgery on her foot. We hoped she might be ready for light adventure travel by the end of the year. Multiple complications during her recovery put the kibosh on that.

So, to total up time lost to sickness, it was: All of January, most of February, a week in May, half of June, half of September, half of October, and all of November and December. That's half the fucking year.

At least nobody died.

You want a second opinion on how shitty of a year 2025 was, health-wise? That's it, right there. 2025: At Least Nobody Died.

To be continued....

2025: A Year of Waiting, part 2

Earlier today I posted my personal reflections on the past year. I dubbed it 2025: A Year of Waiting. That post wasn't all of my personal reflections, though. It was just one part. It turned out after I wrote and edited the part on how 2025 was the year of Being Sick Sucks— a tag I attached to 47 posts last year— I felt so down I needed a break from writing. I didn't want to risk that this retrospective gets stuck in my WIP queue for another few days, though, so I published what I had. I'd come back with the rest later. Later's now.



The thing about Waiting... as a theme is that it has both negative aspects as well as... not-so-negative (I can't quite bring myself to say positive) aspects.

The negative kind of waiting comes with all the things that are beyond your control. Like, do you get a virus despite generally being safe and smart about hygiene? How long does that virus take to run its course? How long does recovering from a surgery take? How many complications happen along the way? All you can do with these is keep waiting, and keep pushing out your expectations for how long you'll be waiting.

On the other hand there's the type of waiting that comes with a situation you have some control. You set yourself up as best you can for the long term, then navigate through the complications and changes thrown your way. Planning with money is one of these situations.

Money: I Planned Patiently, and Now I'm There!

Years ago I started repeating the mantra Five Good Years. Hawk and I did a budgeting exercise to figure out how much money we'd need to spend on a monthly basis in retirement. We included things other people often overlook when they do this as a kitchen table budgeting exercise: health insurance costs, maintenance and insurance on the house and cars, costs for replacing cars every several years, and of course, the costs of living the active lifestyles we'd like to keep.

Once I had the cost side of the budget I worked on the income side. I used my models of an investment portfolio to figure out how much we'd need in the bank to generate cash flow to fund our expenses.

It was much too early to retire then, of course. But it wasn't a Y/N question. It was a matter of when.

And that's where I started saying Five Good Years. Because from what we had then, I estimated that it would take five good years— meaning, five good years of stock market returns— to get us to our goal.

Of course, Five Good Years seldom happen all in a row. I knew that when I started saying it. I figured Five Good Years would actually take 7 years. There'd be a downturn and recovery in the market cycle somewhere in the middle.

As it turns out, Five Good Years took 10 years. I coined the Five Good Years mantra in... checks blog... April 2015. And it was around September 2025 that we reached our target number.

Why the difference, BTW? Why 10 years instead of my forecast 7? For one, unanticipated disruptions gave us more not-good years than I expected. Hawk had two long periods out of work. Two, we had to adjust our number upwards. Even though I accounted for inflation in my model, high inflation rates not seen since the 1980s kicked in in the early 2020s. In addition, health insurance, already a major component of the budget, rocketed up in cost at 2-3x the rate of inflation.

The good news is, we're reached our goal financially now.

The less good news is, I feel a bit like the proverbial dog that chases cars and finally caught one and now isn't sure what to do with it.

Career: Way too Little, Much too Late

Another aspect in life where I've been waiting for many years is my career. I've been waiting for opportunity for advancement to come to fruition.

While waiting I've suffered numerous setbacks over the years. And this year there were even more setbacks.

Early in the year, in January 2025, my company had a big layoff. IMO it was poorly strategized and poorly executed. And that wasn't just my opinion. It was so bad that a lot of good people said, "Fuck it, I'm out," and quit of their own accord. Then in September there was another layoff. That one left us too short-staffed to complete all the work tasked to us in our compensation plan.

Along the way my boss has been saying earnest things about helping me build my career. But at this point it's way too little and way too late. Even if I wasn't already financially at the point of saying, "I'm outta here!" just the fact that it feels like he's shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic while telling me he'll help get me promoted would make me prefer to look elsewhere for my next opportunity anyway.