Here we are, my last post of 2025. Per annual tradition, it’s time to take stock of the year that was for me.
My Theme for 2025: Mortality
Last year was all about transition. Moving from one emotional state to another. Partnered to single. Anxious to more secure. Unconscious to conscious. Wounded to therapized and healing. 2024 was a year of pivot points, an important year in my life that was full of revelations and positive, if painful, change. 2025 was different. For me, 2025 was more about now and envisioning the future I want, not regurgitating the past. I made strides in reducing that rumination of which I am prone, but it’s not completely gone. Far from it. I’m just more aware of it and have gotten better at stopping it in real time before it consumes me. That’s progress.
My romantic pining, always a fruitless endeavor, is finally gone. I’ve settled into a more secure stasis where I’m open to possibility but also know what I’m looking for, so I don’t force things. Instead, I pursue alignment with promising people by moving in clarity and honesty. Clarity is king, and it’s working. I met some wonderful women this year, people with whom I have more in common than people I pursued the year before. More about that later.
What I’ve found though, is all my romantic rumination of 2024 has been replaced by existential rumination. Not on the same scale, or with the same intensity, but this year I kept being reminded of my mortality and how that sand is always fall, fall, falling through the hourglass. These reminders came in bunches: the unexpected death of one of two brothers who live above me, the death of a work colleague I’d known for almost 30 years, my mother’s 80th birthday, the death of a grade school classmate, and the 10th anniversary of my father’s death.
Not to mention countless celebrity deaths that reverberated through my consciousness: Ozzy, Val Kilmer, Diane Keaton, Tony Geary, Rob Reiner, Ace Frehley, Robert Redford, Tristan Rogers, Danielle Spencer, Loni Anderson, David Gergen, George Wendt, Ruth Buzzi, Wink Martindale, Richard Chamberlain, George Foreman, Gene Hackman, Bob Uecker, and David Lynch. I grew up watching these people. When I was my daughter’s age, Sister J. and I watched General Hospital religiously, along with one of my best childhood friends, Anne. All those legendary GH characters: Luke and Laura, Robert Scorpio, and the Quartermaines. The Ice Princess plotline. Tony Geary, who played Luke, died a few days ago, the same day that Robert Reiner was tragically murdered by his own son. Tristan Rogers, who played Robert Scorpio, a character whose namesake I passed on to one of my cats when I was a kid, died earlier this year, along with two other General Hospital actors, Chris Robinson, who played Rick, and Leslie Ann Charleson, who played Monica Quartermaine.
It’s not the importance of Hollywood or celebrity that gets me when these people die. It’s the marking of time, a remembrance of an earlier chapter in my life, a time when I was young and innocent, had fewer worries and obligations to consider, and knew far less about the pain that exists in this world. A time when my father and certain childhood friends who have passed were still alive. These famous people occupied a space in my life, some more significantly than others. Seeing them leave this world, never to exist or create again, is bittersweet and profoundly sad.
Sidenote: I still can’t believe what happened to Rob Reiner and his wife, Michelle. What’s a parent supposed to do in that situation? They tried to help their son for years. Their reward was their own demise at his hand. Fucking tragic all around.
In 2025, all this death was a stark reminder that my own time in this life is limited. I’m not going to live forever. The effect has been to crystalize a mentality and approach to life that I’ve had for a while now.
First, I’m working to live, not living to work. I’ve reached the point in my career where I have knowledge and experience and am really good at what I do for a living. The challenge has always been to try and balance life, pleasure, and my passions with my competing desire of becoming a partner at my firm and achieving the ego gratification that comes with making a name for myself in this profession: public recognition, accolades from my colleagues, and oh yeah, a lot more money. I’m an ambitious and competitive person who has always been driven to achieve the highest station possible, no matter what I’m doing, but especially in my chosen profession. It’s not in my nature to accept second-best. Or more accurately, what is widely perceived as ‘second-best.’
Is it really though?
Several years ago I came to the realization that these two goals: (1) a work-life balance with time to do the things I love, and (2) becoming the best and most successful lawyer I can be, are not possible to achieve at the same time. They’re just not, at least not the way my life is currently structured. I reached the conclusion that I’m just not the kind of person who is going to spend every extra hour or available evening trying to develop new business, bill a few more hours, entertain potential clients, and try to make myself a household name inside and outside of my firm. Why? Because I don’t see the value in it. At least for me personally. Other people see a LOT of value in it.
Ultimately, the potential for professional glory and recognition doesn’t motivate me enough to spend all of my available time doing the things you need to do to possibly achieve them: hours on the internet targeting potential clients, weeknight dinners in the city entertaining them and trying to get their business, extra hours in the office, working weekends, studying the latest trends in my practice and writing about them for publication to get my name out there. Not only do I not see the value in this–especially since I make decent money and am well-respected within my firm already–it’s not something I would enjoy. I feel no passion for it whatsoever. If 2025 reinforced anything for me, it’s that spending my precious time pursuing my passions, not doing things that don’t excite me or make me feel like I’m wasting my life, is the way I want to live out my remaining years.
I know this makes me sound lazy and unambitious as fuck, but anyone who knows me in real life knows this isn’t true. I work hard, and I’m good at what I do. So I’m happy to help my rain-making colleagues achieve those accolades (God bless them). In return, they’ll keep the work flowing to me so I can stay busy enough to achieve MY goals of making enough money to travel the world as often as possible, be a present and involved father to M., enjoy my creative passions of writing and photography, and buy a nice bottle of cologne once in a while until I retire in 10-12 years. This is how I want to live my life. This is how I’m living my life. My priorities are travel, fatherhood, and being creative because they bring me joy. Work brings me some amount of joy, but it’s a means to an end. An important means though. Work, productivity, and earning a decent salary are the engines for everything else, the grease that makes all those other gears turn, so they must be sustained. But they don’t give my life meaning, and they’re not my identity.
It’s important for me to confirm these things to myself regularly because over the years it hasn’t been easy to see my colleagues achieving their professional goals and receiving accolades that a part of me still wants for myself. I need to keep reminding myself that ultimately none of that shit really matters because of that hidden expiration date we all have on our milk carton, which really hit home for me this year. Like when a work colleague I’d known for thirty years died a few months ago, far too young, leaving his two college-aged kids behind. Or when another work colleague who has achieved every possible goal one could achieve in my profession–partnership, appointment to one of the top five leadership positions in my firm, incredible wealth that allows him to own multiple houses across the country, public recognition, and a wildly successful career–suddenly gets brain cancer and is now reduced to experimental stem cell treatments to try to extend his life.
It’s fucking tragic. Shakespearean. I saw him a few months ago at a client dinner in the city, and you know what he said?
“It’s fine, it was just my turn at the wheel.”
“My turn at the wheel.” We’re all getting a turn at the wheel eventually, aren’t we? At a time not of our choosing. 2025 slapped me with this existential wake up call, over and over again.
I’ve said it before. Time is the most precious commodity we have. I’m not going to spend all of my extra time working more and trying to feed my ego. As much as possible, I’m going to spend it on unique experiences, spending time with people I love, and doing the things I’m passionate about. 2025 reminded me of my mortality, of how limited our time is here, and how we sometimes need to create experiences and positive relationships for ourselves in order to live the life that we want. I’ve never been a passive person when it comes to such things. If anything, I’m often too proactive and try to force situations that I shouldn’t be forcing because they’re not controllable and typically end in frustration and/or misery. In 2025 I began to strike more of the right balance in all of this.
2025 Highlights
Much like last year, my biggest highlights were the trips I took to Prague, Budapest, and Vienna. These trips restore and excite me and fill my cup in a way nothing else does. Seeing new places for the first time, navigating them on my own, photographing what appeals to me, meeting and engaging with strangers, exploring and wandering. This is my truest self. This is when I feel the most like my true self. Last year I said trips like this were ‘transformative’ for me. That wasn’t quite right. They’re actually ‘restorative’ because they bring me back to myself; they don’t transform me into someone else. Which is why I’ll keep taking them as often as possible. This year I took a chance on taking a second overseas trip during Thanksgiving week, a week when I’m usually doing nothing of import, and it paid off wonderfully.
Another highlight was taking M. to see Glass Animals in Saratoga Springs in June and managing my car problems on that trip with surprising emotional intelligence instead of a freak-out. Then taking her to see Chappell Roan in September. I created these experiences for both of us, memories that she’ll carry with her after I’m gone. She is a highlight of my year every year. Watching her grow and blossom is a joy beyond words. I have a lot invested in our relationship, which sounds stupid for a parent to say, but I don’t think every parent does. A lot of parents put themselves first more than I feel like I do. She must have a sixth sense because it feels like every date I’m on she calls me in the middle of it, lmfao. I almost always take the call and manage to get off within a few minutes. It’s a nice test for the person I’m with too. If they react well, with empathy, it’s a good sign. If they avert their eyes or look annoyed, it’s a negative tell.
In 2025, I became more conscious and proactive about creating a richer life for myself. Thinking about what I want and taking steps to make it happen. Equally importantly, I’ve been trying to be more patient about the present and accepting things that can’t be changed right away. Things like my relationship status and my living situation. Sometimes you just have to accept what is. Not everything can be altered or improved the second you want it to. Sometimes things have to happen when they’re meant to happen, and all the proactivity and effort in the world won’t change this.
I know, because I’ve tried. By way of example, in the past two years since my last relationship ended, I’ve been on dates with around 50 women. This isn’t a humble brag, trust me. (It’s a little embarrassing honestly.) Almost all of these dates were one and done first dates. Most of them occurred last year and were part and parcel of me rebounding from my last relationship, trying to replace intense feelings that weren’t easily replaced. In 2025, I healed enough to calm the fuck down, be more selective, look for alignment, and give new people a real chance. Earlier in the year I don’t think I was ready for a relationship because I was still feeling echoes of the emotional weight that goes with them, that sense of overwhelming obligation and focusing on someone else’s needs and wants. I was still burned out I suppose.
I have trouble just sitting back and waiting for all this to change on its own, so I continued to go out with people, hoping for a spark and a little chemistry to jump start my engine. I did feel this spark a few times with different people throughout this year, some of which I’ve written about. The most lasting ‘situation’–I don’t really know what to call these things any more–was with someone from the city I met a few months ago whom I really liked. Our energies just synced really well. She was a great communicator, didn’t put on airs, and was just easy to be around. It felt effortless and familiar. You know when you just easily connect with someone and it feels immediately free-flowing? That’s how it felt with her.
But.
In contrast with how it felt when we were together, her texting game sucked something awful. I mean, it was the worst I’ve ever experienced with someone I was interested in. Almost no banter. Huge gaps in response time. Not building towards anything between our dates. It felt totally incongruous with how it felt when we were out together. (We had four dates over two months.) I mentioned this to her a few times in a nice/joking way. She played it off as not being really into texting because she had an anxious attachment style and normally had the opposite problem: texting too much too soon. This was good, she said. She felt calm and secure with me, and things were taking their course in a good way. She was approaching things differently this time.
Uh huh.
I only half-believed this. A quarter actually. When you don’t feel like texting someone you’re excited about, and you’re that controlled about it, there’s a problem. She either wasn’t that into me, or she had a texting roster and I was just lower on the list. (Which also meant that she wasn’t that into me, even though she kept saying she was really interested.) However she felt about what was the right approach for her, it wasn’t right for me. It felt lukewarm, like we were perpetually starting from scratch. I wasn’t used to it either. I need words of affirmation baby. Needs it. That and physical touch. I gently conveyed this to her a few times, to no avail. The latter wasn’t a problem. She was a great kisser, and right before I left for Budapest, I saw her apartment for the first time, and we explored this side of our connection, which had me thinking we had potential and were finally building towards something bigger.
But on my trip it was more of the same. She sent me two texts the first day I was there to make sure I got there alright and then sent an emoji in response to one of my messages the second day, instead of an actual substantive response.
That’s when I did something that I’d been toying with in our prior interactions, but put into full force on my trip. I matched her energy. I didn’t write back at all the entire week. No ‘How are you?’ No ‘Happy Thanksgiving!’ Nothing. And you know what? Neither did she. Radio silence between us the entire week, after hooking up just before I left. It was bizarre, but also a sorely-needed fasttrack to clarity in this confusing situation. I was done with catering to someone who wasn’t giving me what I said I wanted and needed. The fastest way to get to the truth on things like this is to Match. Their. Energy.
I got back on a Saturday–I’d told her when I was returning–and she sent me a text that same day to the effect of “I think we both agree this isn’t working. You’re the first person I’ve been out with that had limited availability [Read: lives outside the city, is divorced, and has a kid and a custody schedule]. I was open to it, but I see it’s an issue now, and it’s been making me hold back. Thank you for giving me hope that I can find someone with EQ who’s a good communicator, I sincerely wish you the absolute best in finding your forever person.”
I responded thanking her for her thoughtful message, agreeing that things were missing that I needed, saying that obstacles can be managed when the right connection is there, but not when it isn’t, and wishing her the best as well.
Over and out. All of this is to say, you can’t force things. Sometimes they just have to play out, and you have to accept what the universe is offering you. You’re not going to change people or what they want. This situation was disappointing because we’d been out a few times, and I thought we had a lot in common, but she was so walled off in some ways that it wasn’t difficult for me to let it go. I can’t be with someone that protective and closed off four dates in. Geography and availability were priorities for her, and she wasn’t sure about me for that reason. It manifested in her texts, even though she passed it off as something else and didn’t reveal the full truth until the very end. Which is another important thing I’ve learned: you’re not going to get the full truth from people right away. You’ll get what they choose to give you when they choose to give it to you. It’s up to you to read between the lines and figure that shit out for yourself based on their breadcrumbs. I’ve been around the block a few times, so I knew something was off the entire time. We weren’t fully aligned, and I finally forced the issue by matching her energy and saved myself some time in the process.
Two weeks later, when I was holding hands with someone else on yet another first date, we coincidentally walked by her apartment near Union Square and the street corner where we’d shared our first kiss. I smiled to myself and shook my head at the surreality of life. (The person I was with flew back to Italy a few days later, so that situation is likely another dead-end, but we had a nice time.)
My love life is fucking weird man, but at least it’s not boring.
2025 Lowlights
There weren’t a lot of these. The usual parental stress raising a tweener. Some dating frustration. But one of the biggest lowlights for me was watching most of the western world not only support a genocide of a helpless population, but crush free speech and political dissent in their own countries to appease modern-day Nazis based on lingering and totally misplaced Holocaust guilt. I’ve written about this extensively, so I won’t belabor it here. I’ve pretty much lost faith in the human race at this point. Indeed, I live in a country that not only supports, funds, and arms a genocide, but which is also running a death squad that’s murdering *alleged* drug traffickers in the open seas with no due process, while refusing to provide any proof that these people are actually drug traffickers. And even if they are drug traffickers, you’re not allowed to just murder them using the U.S. military without a declaration of war, when they haven’t attacked the United States or even killed anyone. Drug trafficking is not a death penalty offense, for fuck’s sake.
I’ve basically reached the conclusion that the United States is the world’s biggest terrorist organization, one that’s been responsible for the murder of more innocent people than any other country on the planet for decades now. If we’re not killing these people ourselves, we’re arming, funding, and providing critical intelligence to the people who are doing the killing. To make matters worse, this Murderer’s Inc. of a country is now being run by a kleptocrat pedophile who’s robbing the country blind while protecting a pedophile ring of which he was a part for more than a decade. Our president is a fucking pedophile with a documented sexual assault history, a pedophile who was elected by clueless, easily-duped, low-information assholes not once, but twice.
So those were my primary 2025 lowlights. I’ve almost given up on complaining about them outside of Twitter because this world is a lost cause, so I’m just going to do my best to manage my mental well-being while Rome burns.
The other big lowlight happened a couple of weeks ago. I got sick with a stubborn virus almost the second my plane landed from Vienna, more sick than I’ve been in years. It’s that nasty flu that’s hitting the country pretty hard right now. It finally departed in the past few days, but for weeks I was seriously congested, exhausted, and coughing like a lifetime smoker.
One night in the midst of this shitshow, I woke up at 3:00 in the morning because I literally couldn’t breathe. My nose was completely congested, totally closed off, as if I were pinching it shut, and I somehow aspirated a big glob of mucus into my windpipe while I was sleeping, so all of a sudden I couldn’t breathe through my mouth either. I jumped out of bed and for the next 20 to 30 seconds, I desperately tried to force air through either passage and into my lungs. When I realized nothing was getting through, I went into full panic mode. It felt like I was drowning.
It was scary as fuck. A total nightmare.
I stumbled into the kitchen, stunned that this was even happening. Then it hit me that I was totally alone. M. was with her mother. There was no one to help me. Not that there was anything anyone could do to help me. I didn’t even consider calling 911 because I was in survival mode, just trying to find some air, just trying to breathe. And even if I called 911, I wouldn’t have been able to speak.
I remember the following panicked thoughts rushing through my head while I was snorting and coughing my way into oblivion:
I’m totally alone here.
I’m going to die from this.
This is insane. How the fuck does this even happen?
What a stupid way to go too.
M. is going to find me dead on the floor when she comes home from school.
This hell lasted probably 20-30 seconds, but it felt like hours. It’s the closest I’ve come to dying since my ski accident when I was 17.
I honestly don’t remember how I got out of it, which passage I forced opened first. It was the middle of the night, and I was half asleep. I may have drank some water, or maybe one of my hard nose snorts finally worked. All I know is I never want to feel that shit again. It was scary as FUCK and really hard to get back to sleep afterwards. I barely slept that night.
What struck me in the ensuing days, what made it so scary apart from the not breathing part, was the realization that I was totally alone in a really bad moment. That quiet solitude while you’re just trying to breathe and survive is quite a boot to the head.
When you live alone, you are extremely vulnerable to sudden mishaps, including death by mucus.
The Biggest Thing I Learned
First, as referenced above, I learned that in many ways we can create the life we want, but we can’t create every aspect of the life we want (or think we want). The key for me is to understand the difference, be proactive about what I can create and control, and let go and let God about the things I can’t, while believing that what’s missing, or what I think is missing, will come to me when it’s supposed to, when I stop pining for, or thinking about it.
Example.
When I got divorced, there was a beautiful antique Asian sideboard that Ex. and I both wanted. We had it in the foyer of our house, and you could see it the second you walked in. We took our first Christmas card photo of M. in front if it. We both loved it, and it was the only piece of furniture we argued about in the divorce. Eventually I let her take it because she’s the one who found it on Craigslist, so she had the most history with it. It was the fairest thing to do.
I stopped thinking about that sideboard years ago. Totally forgot about it, except when I’d happen to see it at her house during a pickup or drop off, and I’d get that little twinge that not only does she have this big ass house while I’m living in the bottom half of one, but she still had that fucking sideboard.
Last week, seven years after we divided our furniture, Ex. told me that she didn’t have room for it any more and asked if I wanted it. I quickly said yes. Now it’s sitting in my living room.
Shit happens when it’s supposed to, not when I want it to.
Sidenote: That’s cool, but seven years is a long fucking wait.
Second, I learned that allowing myself to process my emotions, get therapy when I needed it, and live my life according to the four values I brought to my consciousness last year–honesty, loyalty, authenticity, and consistency–has allowed me to get to a place where I can envision a space for another person in my life. That weight of overwhelming obligation to another is finally dissipating. I’m starting to feel, not just see, but feel, that it won’t be this way with the right person, and the right person is out there somewhere.
Third, I learned that the things we inject into our subconscious really matter in terms of happiness and well-being. If I constantly feed my mind with negative self-talk and self-judgment about myself, or daily images of murdered Palestinian children, for example, it takes a toll on my thoughts, and emotions, and also attracts the wrong things to my life. So one of my tasks for 2026 is to try and strike the right balance between staying informed while monitoring the impact of what I read and ingest. This and finally replace my negative self-talk with positive reinforcement by bringing out my inner Stuart Smalley:
I’ve been dabbling with this lately, and it really works!
The Required Spotify Tribute
As annual recompense for stealing Spotify’s idea, let’s see where I ended up on Spotify this year. Heavy on Lola Young and Sombr, with Chappell and Glass Animals thrown in. That tracks. Zach Bryan is also a favorite. I’m not big on country, but I love his songs.
What may be a little disturbing to some is that according to Spotify, my listening age is 21! I’ve never had an issue with age gaps (cough), but I don’t typically go younger than 38. 21 is arrest-worthy.
2026
What do I hope for in 2026? As always, good health for my daughter, my mother, my family and friends, and myself. Preferably a lot less mucus. Continuing to grow and evolve as a person. Developing more patience, emotional intelligence, and gratitude. Acceptance of what is. A return to Italy with M. this summer. Progress on my dual citizenship application. A torrid affair would be nice.
On a macro level, a karmic boomerang for every Israeli Nazi, progress on a Palestinian state, a true peace for Gaza, and a continuation of growing American opposition to Israeli influence and hasbara in this country. Jail for the Pedo in Chief and his enablers. An actual blue wave next November and a beginning of the end to this madness.
As always, thanks for reading, no matter where you are, or how often you log in. May the coming year bring you good health, much love in your life, and the spark of passion that makes life worth living, in whatever form it may take.
