What started optimistically as the Year of Health (in the eat healthy, exercise more sense) ended up turning into a bit of a Year of Health Hell with not one, but three new chronic conditions added to the list of ailments I’m probably going to be managing for the rest of my mortal days.
Improving my personal wellbeing (and other ambitions) ended up falling to the wayside, focusing instead on maintaining what wellbeing I already had, both physically and mentally.
2025 probably could have been a better year, but there are a couple of highlights I’d like to focus on here.
I got out a bit more
My family and I did an awful lot of travel when I was a young 'un. Holidays in the UK or Ireland happened at least once a year, with some ocean (or globe) spanning journey happening every two to four years.
This has made for the funny fact that, despite living in Europe for about 97% of my life, I’d visited more countries outside of Europe than within it.
Once out of the family home and into university, this naturally declined due to the logistics of living far away and being in a job that didn’t pay well enough to have enough for “savings” or “foreign holidays”.
My ability to travel became even more limited when coming out as transgender. A mismatched passport is a red flag at border control and many will deny entry to trans individuals anyway. Wonton LGBT+ discrimination is very much alive and real.
And for a long while, I didn’t really mind. I’d already gotten to experience dozens of times being abroad, more than many might have in their entire lives, and it was a point in my life where it might be more sensible to build up my domestic life a bit. I could lay off going away for a while.
But in 2024, after eight years of never leaving British soil, that itch to go places started coming back again. In February, I went to Malmö for NordicFuzzCon, and I enjoyed Sweden so much that I went back again at the end of June—to Stockholm this time—to colonise the holiday of my fellow noodlethings, Finch and Tux.
Who are both delightful, by the way.
Domestically, I tried to get around a bit more than I might normally do as well. In addition to the usual ConFuzzled in May, I visited Cardiff more often than I have for years, attended the London e-Prix in July, went to gigs and stage shows, and made multiple day trips to London (not all for work this time!)
Getting out and about a bit more is something I’d like to keep up, though I have no particular plans for 2026 other than heading to Glasgow for Scotiacon. It’s a city I only briefly visited a very, very long time ago now (like… over 15 years?) so it’d be neat to have more of a chance to check it out.
My current big wish is to go interrailing around Europe one day, but for now, that remains a dream.
I’m obviously a masochist who wants to experience getting Deutsche Bahn’d for myself.
I started learning Swedish
So much did I enjoy my sojourns to Sweden that, along with a healthy dose of the dismal backslide of LGBT+ rights in the UK, I decided to take up trying to learn the Swedish language.
There’s probably not a huge amount more to the why that wasn’t already mentioned in my initial blog post about it. Since then I’ve intentionally slowed down a little, Duolingo being a… less than stellar tutor, so I can prioritise recognition and revision rather than rote repetition.
Jag lyssnar och skriver svenska okej men pratar är inte bra. (I wrote that entirely from memory so if it’s janky then… well, it’s janky.)
I’m quite proud of having put myself out there and kept it up for nearly six months now, especially given how much I struggled with, and generally disliked, learning languages in my school days. I’d quite like to find a good alternative to Duolingo, but it’s something I want to keep up!
Is Babbel any good? Let me know!
Wrapping up the Year of Health
Just because I’ve not given a proper update on the Year of Health since April, I feel obliged to provide some update on what has happened before the year is out.
I was given a CPAP device for dealing with sleep apnea back in June. I didn’t, and still don’t, really get on with it—sleeping whilst wearing a mask is a bit claustrophobic and unpleasant—but the drastic improvement in sleep quality otherwise speaks for itself.
Hypertension continues to run amok a little. It’s significantly lower than it was at the start of the year, when it was in the “you could literally have a stroke at any moment” territory and generally stable, but still higher than it should be despite an ever increasing mixture of prescriptions to try and control it.
One side effect of these medications, and the only one that I seem to have fallen victim to, is muscle cramps. This has put a lid on doing any activity, be it walking, carrying heavy shopping, or even washing the dishes, for more than about 15 minutes without getting aches.
I’m going to be starting a third medication in the new year to try and bring my blood pressure down further, and I’m still on the waiting list for the hypertension clinic.
On the transition front, I’ve had half of my NHS funded laser and speech therapy appointments. Both have been reasonably effective so far! I’m still on a fairly restricted supply of HRT due to hypertension, which is sad, but at least progress is happening elsewhere.
A musical interlude
I don’t know if there was something special about 2025, but I found myself really enjoying a lot of music that was released this year. Before we finish, he’s a few bops from the last 12 months that have jammed themselves in my brainhole.
“I Don’t Wanna Talk” is one of the singles from Daði Freyr’s upcoming album, due to be released early next year. Like so much of Daði’s music, it takes a cosy subject, in this case being so comfortable around a loved one that you feel no need to even speak, and sets it to upbeat, electronic-funk-y music in a way that just makes me feel happy.
“Ice Water” is the first track on Lonely Magic, the second album by Steven Universe creator (and major Adventure Time contributor) Rebecca Sugar. A powerfully upbeat, autobiographical track about being in love and pursuing creative passion. It’s a wonderful companion to “Hill to Die On” from later in the album, which speaks about the cost of success in those creative endeavours.
Sugar’s album ends on “This is a Love Song”, an unrestrained, angry tune about escaping an unhealthy relationship. In that same vein, another song I’ve really vibed with this year is “talking shit” by Montagne, from the album it’s hard to be a fish.
Montagne represented Australia in Eurovision in 2021, and was due to do so in the aborted 2020 contest, but her entries in Eurovision does not speak to her ability. Those tracks were neutered compared to a newly independent Montagne. Her music is delightfully eccentric, brash and personal in all the ways that I love music to be.
This year, Pulp released More, their first studio album in 24 years. It’s very like Pulp, which is to say that I like it on occasion, but it’s not the kind of thing I want to have all of the time.
This is a lie. I love pulp in my OJ. I cannot have enough pulp. I want it thicker than magma.
Regardless, the lead single from More, “Spike Island”, is… nice. It too is very Pulp, being about lead singer Cocker’s discomfort with fame, but what set this track apart in my mind is the music video. It’s AI generated. But it uses it to actively criticise the output of AI generation, showing how it takes beautiful photography (originally taken in 1995), hallucinates badly, and bastardises the original work in its attempt to create something new.
The video ends with a pointed message about how creation is important, as is the process behind it, and that’s what I find beautiful about it.
2026 is the Year of…
The Year of Health could very well have continued into 2026, but frankly, it’s not something I really want to keep thinking about, much less keep as my yearly theme. Instead, 2026’s theme has already been a few months in the making.
2026 is the Year of Service.
My current job and life situation is fairly stable right now. I make enough money to pay for what I need to and have some spare for luxuries. I have enough free time that I can stop and rest a few times a year before I need to start running to survive again. My health could be better, but the bits that need improvement are being managed and mitigated against.
At the same time, a lot of people—a lot of people I know, even—cannot say the same. The job market sucks, the housing market sucks, the tech industry sucks, the political climate sucks, the actual climate sucks. A lot of people are struggling and it’s hard to not feel guilty that my still meagre life is so comfortable by comparison.
Over the last year, I’ve given about £1,850 to various charities, non-profits, mutual aid organisations, and independent creators. That number’s probably going to go up in 2026.
At the same time, I’m looking for more volunteering opportunities.
I’ve recently been brought onto the IT crew for ConFuzzled (I’m gonna help make things accessible!) in addition to running an event at the convention’s next outing, and I’m taking over as the primary steward of the Encyclopedia Robotica wiki, which I should really work on.
Basically, next year, I want my focus to be on trying to help others a bit more. Hopefully that plan doesn’t end up backfiring too.