For the last time in 2025, I thought that I would hop on here and give a quick update on where life has been. In general, December has been a chaotic month where it’s been difficult to sit down and do this type of writing justice. Part of it is scheduling conflicts, but it’s also that I’ve dedicated a lot of free time to backlogging my annual entries for my Snapshot series. What I’ve found is that I’m generally overzealous and may write more than I should in those essays, but I need to get them out. There must be some way to convey my feelings on the year that will be there for research purposes further down the line. Will they be my best writing? I hope so, but I’m nervous about a handful of entries. However, they capture where I was at in 2025, and that’s what I feel is more important.
To start breaking down what’s been going down since I last updated, I will say that this has been both a hectic month but also a fun one. I got to see Ben Platt at his residency at The Ahmanson Theater. I had seen him in 2024 while on The Honeymind Tour and thought he was fantastic then. If there were any regrets from that night, it wasn’t that I had “my picture” of Platt. I’m talking about one that I personally took that I could look back on and know where I was at that moment. Part of it was the distance to the stage at The Greek, but it was also that my mind isn’t naturally thinking that I need to take pictures in public. I want to live in the moment, and it has done me well. I’d say it’s even helped me at this recent residency.
To be honest, there’s part of me that believes The Greek was better, though conversations with people since have led me to believe it’s just the difference between indoor and outdoor venues. Whereas the open skyline felt more electric, The Ahmanson felt a bit muted and, even with advisement from Platt, never quite became as raucous as he would’ve liked. That isn’t to say I had a bad time, but the air was definitely different. It was a full, satisfying show that, in some ways, had a more satisfying setlist, but I guess the idea of comparing things is inevitable sometimes. Still, hearing him sing stuff like Lady Gaga’s “You And I” or ABBA’s “The Winner Takes It All” was a lot of fun. I’m not terribly excited about Coco Jones being his surprise guest, though she has fulfilled the surreal principle of being everywhere after that day. She’s been to Disneyland and Christmas Day at The Knicks game. How did she go from being someone I didn’t know existed to being inescapable? It’s not like when I saw Snow Tha Product, and she just disappeared after I left the venue.
As far as shows to send 2025 out on, this was a great one. I think that man puts on a great show, and while I think it never quite matched the marketing comparing it to the New York residency, it did enough to fulfill my expectations. Maybe it’s because we were at an afternoon show that things felt different. Even then, he’s a passionate man who never let me down for a second. His set may have gotten more ADHD as it went and lost the throughline of exploring his career, but it made up for it with sheer enthusiasm. Not bad for an opening night of Chanukkah. I also got a t-shirt, which is a variation of the one they sold on The Honeymind Tour, of which they had sold out of in my size. He even printed a Playbill, which was neat.
To start shifting to everything else in my life, I thought that I would briefly touch on what I’ve done recently. As of yesterday, I’ve published my 13th short story of the year (and 14th straight month), “One Last Unforgiveable Sin.” As far as New Year’s Eve stories go, it’s probably my favorite that I’ve done in many years, and it captures indirectly how I’ve felt about the year as a whole. I won’t pretend to think this was a flawless year for my fiction writing, but I’m still surprised by how ideas just kept pouring out, encouraging me to look for something new to challenge myself. Only the reader can really determine what the best was, but in my opinion, it’s one of the most successful years in my goal as a writer. Add in that I published a novel, “Lava Lamp,” and it feels like a year I’ll envy in the not-too-distant future.
Part of that reason is that 2026 will be dedicated to me writing Novel4, which is in the process of being outlined and will be kicking off a first draft sometime soon. I recognize that my goal is January, but “Lava Lamp” was a rare story where I didn’t get the draft done in a calendar year. Part of that was simply that I was in school and had other commitments. Even so, I think I need to keep that drive going and not lose sight of what the next chapter will look like. I’m also working on compiling a short story collection for a release in 2026 that will hopefully go a little better than “Esoteric Shapes.” I say “better,” as if it were a disaster, but I’m still self-conscious about it being a pandemic release where I felt guilt about putting it out during a time where I felt like a mailman could potentially die delivering my book to someone. It’s an egotistic, irrational thought, but it did dampen my rollout. I think every artist worth their salt has had that problem, so I shouldn’t be mad. At least 2025 went better. I got to publish a book the same year as Thomas Pynchon, which is meaningless but awesome.
At the time of this publication, I have only one more essay I will be releasing online. I’m still not sure what I will say as my official wrap-up for 2025, though I imagine anyone reading my Snapshot series will get an idea of what topics could be addressed. It’s surreal to think we are officially more than a quarter through the 21st century. That, and I’ve lived through every year of it. It’s been bizarre to watch things evolve and become hyperaware of how time passes. A quarter century has gone by. What a way to learn about how time marches on.
I suppose to shift into the heart of this entry, some emphasis should be made on how Christmas went. In general, it’s never been my favorite holiday. There’s so much about it that feels obligatory and pressures everyone to have a good time that they often miss the magic in the first place. Maybe it’s why I’ve been a fan of the week after, where the tension is gone, and all that’s left are the feel-good memories of a year gone by as people look to New Year’s and the potential for change and growth. It’s a day that doesn’t ask anything of you. You simply sit there with someone you love and experience the moment unfold. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. Things come and go. It’s beautiful, poetic, and I think the final hours of December 31st are amazing because you just have to give yourself over at that point. Nothing is going to change this year. It’s over. Just appreciate what you’ve done and can do.
But Christmas always seems to be a holiday that reminds me of public speaking. When I know that I have to present something to an audience, I will prepare so exhaustively that the speech is comparatively banal. I’m used to freaking out if things go wrong, and the guilt of something going wrong will plague you for a long time. For me, Christmas Day is one where you need to put on good airs because everything could be remembered for the rest of time. To have bad juju risks turning it into a cursed holiday, and given that it’s a caloric holiday to begin with, it’s something that strangers will remind you of by accident. We as a society have never been able to balance exuberant joy that feels authentic with the genuine exhaustion of mass marketing. It’s all too much pressure to be “in the mood,” and I think it can hurt the overall expectations.
Which isn’t to say that I had a bad year. If anything, it was one not dissimilar from the public speaking incidents where I overprepared and got to watch everything play out in a satisfying enough manner. For any shortcomings that arose, they were quickly forgotten as everyone got caught up in the social festivities. Basketball was largely a whiff this year, but it didn’t matter. I have a good family, and they did what they could to make this day special. Even if we were low on the levels of music played, there was plenty to be enthusiastic about. My dad and I sat around commenting on a yule log video that KTLA was playing, which somebody was constantly coming in and out of frame to fix the wood.
I wouldn’t say there were many stories that I feel like sharing from that day. Because we have cats, we had to downsize the decorations. Thankfully, said felines were well-behaved and made that aspect less nauseous. I was once again on dishwashing duty, and I’m proud to say that we got things under control by 8 PM. By then, we were burned out on NBA games and flipped over to watch How the Grinch Stole Christmas. If you have to ask which one, I’ll say the good one. If you have to ask which is the good one, then you need better taste. All in all, I was more in the mood and tried to watch a variety of titles. I revisited Gremlins for the first time in a while and, you know what, it’s very good. A Christmas Tale was also pretty good despite being an overlong downer.
Oh, I suppose that the one thing that I could say is that I learned how to do crossword puzzles. After struggling to make anything with online generators, I looked up tutorials on how to make one in Microsoft Word, and let me just say, it turned out very well. I’m proud of that skill. While crosswords aren’t my type of puzzles, I’m glad to have that skill. If you’re asking what was being solved, just know that my sister is working on buying tickets to see The Indiana Fever next season. There’s a decent chance my nieces will get to see one of their favorite players, Caitlin Clark, live and in action very soon. Fingers crossed.
I also got a Magic Bullet. When I was younger, there was an infomercial for it that aired all the time and became a joke among my peers. I wouldn’t say it was something everyone wanted so much as we just made fun of it for a variety of (sometimes juvenile) reasons. Even so, it was a curious invention that never left my mind. I needed to know what its deal was. And so, by some unknown force, I was gifted one and will now get to try it out and see if things can truly be done in three seconds.
If I can recommend new content that everyone should check out, I am a big fan of the [adult swim] special The Elephant. The gist of it is that four different animators work against each other to make one cohesive story based on a prompt. There’s no awareness of what the other is doing, and I think it delivers one of the most uniquely satisfying works of art that I’ve seen this year. Given that I’m also enjoying Pendleton Ward’s Fionna and Cake, I think the dazzling nature is more than a gimmick. I’m starting to think that [adult swim] is one of the few places to get experimental art for the masses. I wouldn’t say it’s the greatest, but stuff like this makes me hopeful that we won’t lose the unconventionality.
I’m also a major fan of Marty Supreme, which continues Josh Safdie’s track record of making tense cinema with kinetic and anxiety-ridden storytelling that never lets up. I’d even argue that Timothee Chalamet is doing something that really feels new and warrants any suggestion of him as the best actor of his generation. Admittedly, that hyperbole doesn’t come around much for me. The last time he felt that innovative was Call Me By Your Name, which is going for a different energy. He’s been continually good, and I can see the effort, but Marty Supreme is doing something extraordinary. It’s real galaxy brain cinema, and I’m hoping to write a more thorough essay sometime in the not-too-distant future.
Am I a fan of this time of year also because everything is coming to an end? I’m realizing that a lot of my commitments are over for the next week. Despite being a writer who lives on the old adage “publish or perish,” I’m not terribly bothered right now. I’m releasing work up until December 31st, but it’s almost entirely in the books. As mentioned, there’s one more essay that I’ll write, and I have a few more hours to figure out what the angle is. I’m submitting it by Tuesday night, so whatever will be will be.
To start wrapping this up, I’ll suggest that 2025 was a good year, but the collective nature is convincing me to the contrary. If you look at what I’ve produced, then I have stuck true to what makes me happy. However, I genuinely believe that 2025 is a much worse year than 2020. I know that sounds disingenuous for many reasons, notably that millions more died, and going outdoors was a nightmare. I’m not discrediting how hard that time was, and, in that respect, it was a terrible time to be alive.
However, there is something about 2025 that is more cataclysmic. At least by this point in 2020, we had the promise of a new president and a vaccine to combat. There was a sense of progress and a collective desire to better everything. Right now, it feels like the president is destroying the very institution he’s been sworn to protect and is actively changing the history books. The America we started things in isn’t what it is now, and I’ve been very upset about what he plans to do. Even the suggestion of a Christmas post saying it may be liberal-minded people’s last Merry Christmas has shone a light on how toxic things are right now. The notion, unlike the pandemic, is that people are like “three more years of this” instead of “at least there’s a cure.” There’s no empathy, and I think the people who have the power to fix things aren’t doing enough. Everything I’ve believed in has been brought into question more out of necessity because what I thought would guard from corruption has been proven to be an idea. A great idea, but flimsy when you realize ideas aren’t stone.
I’m hoping next year is better, but I can’t say for sure. If anything, the good will have to come after a period of supreme darkness, and I’m not ready to live through that. I guess we’ll have to get there sooner rather than later. It’s inevitable. Or I hope so. I’m tired of the cynicism and division and ready for something better. Hopefully, we’ve gotten through this childish phase of life. It’s been a decade of this. How embarrassing.
Anyway, thank you to those who keep reading my stuff. It means a lot to me, and hopefully, you get some amusement out of what I have to say. I’m sure 2026 will be a good year for me in terms of creativity. There is a lot to keep me grounded. I’m not as bad as I was in 2021, and I’m beyond relieved for that. Fingers crossed that everything stays going good. Do what you can to make the world a better place. It won’t change everything, but it may make others’ days better. In a world where it feels like nobody wants to try, that’s all you can do. See you next year, buddy.
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