Hi everyone. It’s time for my yearly review. This year wasn’t exciting in any particular way. I’m not sure whether that’s actually a bad thing though. I mean, I didn’t decide to move yet again and that’s a good thing. Most of the bad parts of the year not being exciting are exactly that: it was incredibly boring.
That’s also what led to the most significant lows of this year: the fact that, for a while, an extra cup of green tea at 9PM would be my highlight of the week. I have, over the past couple of months, been able to make this cup of tea a regular occurrence, so in that sense things are improving.
When I looked at my hopes for 2025 a few days ago, I noticed most of them weren’t particularly ambitious. I mean, I was hoping to improve my crafting and do more cooking. I can’t remember whether I had already tried to ask ChatGPT how to build an armature for a standing polymer clay unicorn and, as such, whether this idea was behind that hope. If it was, I can safely say that I didn’t achieve this. I must say I haven’t improved my polymer clay skill much at all. I have, however, picked up jewelry-making again and my wife loved the necklace I made her.
I also did a lot more cooking than I did in 2024. It wasn’t as much as I’d hoped when the behavior specialist promised me early this year that when my one-on-one got approved, she’d allow for a weekly cooking activity. I am cautiously optimistic that this will change in 2026.
I had also hoped to find a physical activity other than walking that I could do regularly. No such luck. I’m not sure this will change in the new year.
Tapering my meds was one of the major successes of this year. I can’t remember what dose of aripiprazole I was on at the start of 2025, but I’m now down to 11mg a day and have also been able to completely go off my pregabalin. I also must say that I’ve been able to stay relatively mentally stable. Yes, I did have a deep low in July, which is once again down to the fact that I had been going through the motions for so long that life felt like I was not really living it.
This year was also the year we had yet another Center for Consultation and Expertise consultation. I haven’t yet found out what the consultant is going to recommend even though she said she was going to let me know by mid-December. I doubt it’s going to lead anywhere significant, but maybe I’m wrong.
Finally, this year was the year my wife and I were trying to figure out our relationship status. Over the summer, we were planning to get a divorce, but this eventually didn’t happen. We’re still unsure as to how to align the legal situation with our actual feelings for each other and it looks likely divorce will be on the table sometime within the not-too-distant future again. Thankfully, we’re both pretty sure that we’ll always be best friends.
One of John Holton’s writing prompts for this week is what letter grade we’d give 2025 and why. I’m clueless about letter grades, so I’m going to rate the year on a scale of 1 to 10 as is the grading system here in the Netherlands. My rating would be a 5, which is just about below-average. Things that would improve the grade I’d give next year, are mostly related to my having more meaningful activities.
A Multitude of Musings 