On 2025

This one snuck up on me. It has been ten years since the last time I wrote a "real" year in review. A decade since I almost did not make it to thirty and learned my sister never would. Ten revolutions around the sun since I quit my corporate job, moved across the country, and made a new home in Portland. 2015 was a complicated year.

Ten years later, I made it to forty. So much has happened in the intervening years. I earned the title principal engineer. I fell in love and got married. I bought a house. I stopped speaking to my parents. I dealt with the pain of losing beloved pets and the eventual joy of adopting new ones. I survived the early stages of a pandemic that killed millions. I cannot remember an uncomplicated year.

2025 brought us horrors that rhymed a little too much with a past oft forgotten or misremembered (or never learned about at all). There is so much unnecessary pain and suffering. Too many people on the precipice looking for an "other" to blame, and so often choosing those that couldn't be the cause if they tried. The phrase "one day, everyone will have always been against this" has stuck in my mind since reading the book. I want to believe that day will come soon, but I'm not so sure. People are still lionizing the architects of the horrors of my youth. It's complicated.

The field where it used to be easy for me to find a new job is now a wasteland. I was too young to experience the dot-com bubble and lucky enough to find my first stable job before the 2008 crisis. I like my job and hope it will be a port that protects me from yet another storm, but I cannot predict the behavior of these strange winds. I hope that the skills of a seasoned software engineer will still be valuable in the future despite the lofty promises of LLMs. It's complicated.

I am doing a lot of hoping these days. It reminds me of something I said in my last major talk.

I can hope for it, and I can fight for it, but I can't plan for it.

I was speaking about the glacial pace of systemic change in the tech industry, but this applies to so many things. I read Mariame Kaba's We Do This 'Til We Free Us (a collection of essays about prison abolition and organizing) as part of a book club this year. Her definition of hope is the only one that makes sense to me any more.

I always tell people, for me, hope doesn’t preclude feeling sadness or frustration or anger or any other emotion that makes total sense. Hope isn’t an emotion, you know? Hope is not optimism.

Hope is a discipline.

The future is uncertain. It feels like we are all dancing on the edge of a knife. Some will ignore this and stick their heads in the sand. Others will give up and choose nihilism. I am constitutionally incapable of the former, and a bit too stubborn for the latter. My middle-aged, cynical ass is trying to work on the discipline of hope.

I desperately wish for 2026 to be a better year. I can hope for it. I can fight for it. But I can't plan for it.