2025 in the Rearview
I like to think they can’t keep getting worse, but my lived experience only goes so far.
I turned 51 last January and will remain so for the next 16 days, which means, sadly, I don’t know how 2026 will play out or compare to the nearly ineffable 2025.
We knew going in it would be bad. There was very little optimism in January 2025 that things would go off script. By script, I mean a world-changing revenge tour by one of the greatest narcissists of our time.
So, I went ice fishing and tried desperately to ignore the avalanche of Executive Orders sold as shock and awe hoping against hope that the courts would at least reign in the want to-be-tyrant.
There is a desire to characterize this year as so much more than what one petty, little man can do when the institutions put in place to control him do not. As a former reporter who worked with beneficiaries of USAID in Ukraine, I saw, second-hand through my former colleagues, the full impact of a senile rich man pulling the carpet out from under democracy. If you all could see the number of children worldwide who died because of this one atrocity, you would be angry beyond reckoning. But you won’t look.
On Lifelong Friends
Our core group is a small one consisting of friends we’ve known most of our lives. My brother and I have shared a best friend since childhood. That group has defined us though we’ve spent years and even decades apart from each other.
We all traveled together to Sayulita, Mexico in February to celebrate yet another 50th birthday, a more frequent event these days. These are my people, and as we pair down our lives a bit entering this “middle age,” I’m more grateful for the continuity of their friendship, love and trust in my life than ever.
Of course we ate, drank and adventured our asses off in the sun and surf. We watched birds and caught fish and ate ceviche like it was an Old Testament miracle. We shared joy and a rich slice of freedom from the weight of existence many Americans feel. If you can escape from it one way or another, I highly recommend it.
We marched together in public spaces, when we returned home, protesting the burgeoning fascism, the continuing attacks on women and the explicit racism of the regime.
Lifelong Friends
“A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Spilling the Tea
I escaped into remote places with a small tea kit where I would find a mossy rock in the mist and roar of a waterfall and prepare tea Gung Fu style. I started this in January and continued because the small act of making tea in a beautiful place helped me linger longer and lingering longer felt better than moving on too quickly. This became a series called Tea in Beautiful Places.
I’ve felt a strong loss of creativity in recent years, but much of that is due to the loss of human curation to algorithms and to AI. My mind saw it as losing touch with my creative side, but I was feeling what most of you do, which is a deep sense of loss of connection with other people.
I started writing travel stories about food, adventures and tea, because researching these is pure escapism for me. Stretching my writing muscles felt good, and like the Ents, I woke up and found that I was strong.
Words and Music
I have to pay homage to the little delicacies that pulled my attention away from the scroll, because even now I’m recognizing that small distractions pulled my mind out of that despair in the air long enough to keep me breathing.
I picked Vonnegut to explore in 2025 and found four or five of his books to read. After reading two, I realized I chose poorly. Not because Vonnegut is bad, but because he is too good at satire and dark humor. I shall return to these in a more lighthearted time.
Realizing this early, I switched gears entirely and finally read Larry McMurtry’s masterpiece “Lonesome Dove.” I listened to “The Sun Also Rises,” on audiobook and saw it, or rather heard it, in a whole new light, and I’ve spent quite a bit of the year reading about the Silk Road for reasons you probably already know or will become familiar with soon.
My year in music was an exploration of the best protest albums of all time, and while my choices were limited by what I could find on vinyl, I mostly feel they represent a good look at what it means to write songs in protest of machines. In order, we listened to a lot of: The Clash, “London Calling,” Rage Against the Machine, “Killing in the Name of,” Bikini Kill, “Pussy Whipped,” Tracy Chapman, Bob Dylan “The Times They Are A-Changin’,” Jason Isbell “The Nashville Sound,” Bruce Springsteen “Born in the U.S.A.,” Marvin Gaye “What’s Going On,” Nina Simone, System of a Down “Toxicity,” Green Day “American Idiot,” and Jesse Welles “Middle.”
Circumnavigating the Globe with Dad
The absolute highlight of my year, and how could it not be, was traveling to China and Central Asia with my father. I went along as a caregiver, of sorts, his eyes are failing him, so I lent him mine as we circumnavigated the globe together from September to October.
I got to see the city he was born in, something I’ve felt a deep connection to for a long time without understanding why. Place is an important theme in my life, and being in Ghulja, also called Yinning, in Northwest China with my dad satisfied a lifetime of questions and curiosities.
Dad and I in Istanbul
“Not all those who wander are lost.” - J.R.R. Tolkien
Our travels took us along the Silk Roads with the aid of air travel, though we did see camel caravans hearkening back to the old days. I got to look up at the Tien Shan mountains from their shadow on the Almaty Airport in Kazakhstan before we spent several days in a rain-soaked Kirgizstan village. Uzbekistan was a slice of orange when you’ve been without citrus too long. It was a long-sought after spice. I could’ve spent a month in Tashkent or Samarkand. Instead, we journeyed on through the wild desert lands of Turkmenistan, one of the more difficult countries on earth to visit.
We traveled to the famed Darvaza Gas Crater, also called the Door to Hell and slept in the warmth of yurts under a sky with more stars than I remember seeing before.
If I had time to tell you about the people we met and the places we saw, I’d never stop writing this year in review.
One of the unexpected joys of this trip with my father was a few days spent together reflecting on our journey in Istanbul, Turkey. We planned for a long layover there, but those few days were a delightful blend of self-care, good food, long conversations, down time and reflection against a backdrop that included views of the Bosphorus out one window and the Hagia Sophia out the other.
It was a trip I will never forget, and it lit in me that old passion for travel and new places that I have tried to bury several times over the course of my life.
The fall was a blur after those slow days traveling the Silk Roads by trains, planes and automobiles. I can still taste the dust of it all some days when I allow myself to fall back into it.
As always happens in these bleak days between December and March, the unnamed downtime wherein we rebuild our reserves, tidy up our lives a bit and move with a bit more solemnity than we do in June, I find my voice again. If only briefly.
