A year in review - 2025

2025 was a surprising year of growth. For someone my age, growth is usually linked to external things: Money, kids, Back yards. But this is the year (a very random year in my forties) that I felt like I personally and creatively grew the most since possibly my early 20s.

I’m a filmmaker and photographer, but most of this growth has been bulldozing and building levees to protect a creative practice. This is stepping back from the specific craft of filmmaking and trying to understand what a creative practice, and by extension, a creative life really is. What do I really want / have to say?

Social Media

Having no previous “year in review”, let’s cheat and go back to 2017: The Year I Quit Facebook. There was a creeping feeling that social media was becoming almost exclusively bad faith entertainment and adding near-zero value to my days.

I was beginning to feel that social media, like an invasive species, was displacing the easiest target: creative projects. Work? That has to get done. Creative side projects are the ones we sacrifice first.

I quit the site one day after opening my browser and reflexively clicking on the Facebook shortcut, forgetting why I opened the browser in the first place. I went through every hoop to delete my account. “Yes, delete all of my data.”

Reopening my account a couple years ago for Marketplace, It was like I never left. Data was never really deleted. Meta bets you don’t mean it.

The 5 minutes I’ve glanced the FB feed in the past 3 years on my way to Marketplace makes me terrified for our parents... falling for the Ai-ification of the feed. My favourite quote from my favourite film, A Serious Man, plays in my head: “What is going on?”.

I left Twitter (some names are too cringe to say) during The Transition, and then Threads popped up and I was surprised by how quickly it connected me to an interesting filmmaking and photography community. But then, surprise! It has devolved into a dumpster fire of engagement bait. The speed of this has been wild. Bad faith posts, enraged responses. Like a salesperson easing into their pitch, the platform let us settle in before resorting to what it needs for metrics. I can’t participate. This week it’s all about how a new Sony camera doesn’t have a specific feature.

Bluesky? I don’t know how to make it stop showing me bad photos of birds.

I go on walks now

I’ve talked about being invited to walk the Camino in Spain this spring. Something I never considered. It changed my life, and since then, walking most days (it’s tricky with rural roads covered in snow), I’ve found my doomscroll replacement. Walking is easy enough for your mind to drift, too active to scroll on your phone (people try!). I wrote a love letter to walking in nature here.

Human connection

Last newsletter I wrote about a peer group I started. This is one of the brightest spots in my calendar. We’re meeting this Wednesday. Last week I went to an in-person event where our Canadian contingent met up. It was hard for me to find the energy to go into the city. It’s easy to call myself an introvert and stay home. But the rewards of going to the thing, meeting smart people always outweigh the atrophy of staying home.

Social media feels anything but social. Being there in person. That takes effort. The people who put in effort are usually the best people.

This has also made me realise the difference between networking and community.

Sleep

Conspicuously after talking about social media: My sleep is better this year. I tried CBD, I tried melatonin, fundamentally we think more is the solution. What helped me: Less.

1. No caffeine after noon - Which is a big change if you know how much I love coffee. I make some exceptions for this during low stress times or weekends. But an espresso after 3pm? You’re insane. Sure, you might sleep after caffeine, but are you waking up rested?

2. No phone in my room - I haven’t slept with my phone in my room since this spring with the exception of maybe 3 important nights before big film shoots where I wanted an alarm to scream at me. I have an e-reader that has no social media installed and still lets me capture ideas into Notion. My Fitbit wakes me up.

3. Loop Earplugs - They’re expensive, but they don’t rub against my pillow, easy to clean. I thought they’d be good for social events as well where I get over-stimulated. But I hate hearing myself chew in them. I just use them for sleep. Or fireworks.

I have a voice

This year (and I’ll cheat because I’ll include last year) I started to feel like i’m finding my voice. Hacking through the tendrils of imposter syndrome, I feel like I have something I can say… even though i’m a terrible writer in what feels like that voice-cracking adolescent phase. The joy of working through an idea on a keyboard pushes me to just write (good or bad!). Writing has been the most exciting part of my life the past 2 years.

No matter what creative craft you’re pursuing. Writing should be a part of its practice.

The Zine

I’ve mentioned a zine a few times. But writing something new, getting that ball rolling has been slow. I found an old magazine project from design school that made me extra excited for this. I’m in “production hell” right now. Really just trying to establish relationships with printers and figuring out how to produce something real and analog-physical… for the first time in a long time.

Holding this old Zine, as well as looking through my physical portfolio has reminded me the work that went into it and the reward of holding it. A tangible home for my words and writing is very exciting. I’m going to try my best to have it printed before the new year. I’ll sell it through my Patreon. Free for supporters. I’ll let you know.

The Atrophy of Middle Age

You know those people who peaked in high school? There are people like that throughout various stages of life. Me? With hindsight I feel like I haven’t grown much in the past 10 years. Life is busy. Work is busy. It is all growing, but passive vs active.

This year, writing again, READING again (I’ve read more this year than I have in the past ten) has made me understand that I have to keep moving and growing. Search out knowledge vs passively digest the first 2 paragraphs of a news article that was passively served to me via bad faith social media. Don’t TLDR life.

Stuff

(there are some affiliate links here FYI, and things that work for me may not work for you.)

One of the things that I thought was a luxury splurge ended up being my favourite thing of the past year. My full-size Boox Note Max e-ink reader. It’s not cheap, but between this, my homemade art book reading stand prototype, and my $12 thrifted lamp (needed for a non-backlit screen) with a Philips High CRI LED light, this is my favourite corner in the house. I can read the New Yorker for free through Libby, and can flip through the actual magazine layout (e-ink is really only usable for the text, photos are pretty blobby, but I don’t count e-ink as a “screen“). On Saturday mornings I can read newsletters and articles sent to Instapaper throughout the week (I’m experimenting with Readwise right now to pull in all of my highlights from Kindle, Kobo, and Instapaper.)

READING

Even though I’m reading a ton, I’m a sloooow reader. I’m halfway through Walden right now (I’m reading the free Kindle edition). It’s one of those books that people talk about but have never read (looking at myself). It’s hilarious. Thoreau feels like a kindred, surly spirit. It’s also interesting how his concerns with the old town of Concord echo our complaints about our busy social media-saturated world. We think we’re special, but humans have been fighting the same feelings for centuries.

What I like about the e-reader, as much as a paper copy of Walden would be nice (which I have), any archaic words can be tapped on and instantly defined. The Mcguffy readers my mom made me read while I homeschooled and the King James Version of the Bible were unintended primers for loving Shakespeare and Walden, but there’s still lots of language that trips me up and a quick tap defines.

Speaking of “Stuff”, looking through my highlights, Thoreau says something I’ve been telling my kids (and YouTube audience) for a while...

I tell my kids that time is the ultimate currency we exchange for money. There is a cost to everything: social media, the company we keep (good and bad), the time we spend working, the time we sit in our cars, the time we spend on TikTok. All it takes is to ask one elderly person in your life “What’s important?”

What I know is they’re not going to tell you that it’s that the new Sony a7rV’s lack of “open gate”.

Thanks for reading. Keep creating.