2025 in the Rear View

Ok, well, for a start I’m sorry to anyone who cares (likely no one, I mean I don’t and I’m the person most invested in this blog) that this review of 2025 is arriving a few days after it has ended, but I don’t hold with the idea that the year ends in mid-November and that everything beyond that is waffle, fluff, ambiguous emptiness, no, so I don’t respect your opinion on this. I’m sorry. But I don’t feel bad at all.

I wouldn’t even have considered trying to summarise 2025 until the afternoon of December 31st at the earliest. And I wasn’t available then. I’m available now (the afternoon of January 4th.)

I was away for most of December (as regular readers will likely have noticed), and because I’m currently using a phone that prohibits typing at length, I lacked the technology to blog. I did, however, read quite a bit, and some catch-up posts on those books will be winging their way onto TriumphOfTheNow.com over the next few weeks. I will stick to reading giant novels until I’ve caught up with myself, I think. Or maybe not.

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I set myself 10 resolutions at the start of the year, an increase from the previous year, despite 2024 having had a pretty low resolution success rate. You’ll be glad (or indifferent) to hear that this time I succeeded at almost every single one. Not all, but most.

2025 was a financially precarious year, as I’m currently working freelance and not full time, and though some “I love your blog” donations are always appreciated to top things up, at this point the precarity hasn’t (yet!) tipped over into horror. (It could happen at any time, though, of course (that’s the nature of precarity), so though the “free time” spent doing childcare and the schedule flexibility currently work for me, at some point the scales will shift. Let’s see how, when and where that happens…

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I read some of the worst books I’ve read in years in 2025, but I also read some absolute belters, so it doesn’t rate as one of my worst years for reading.

My child can walk now, and has a handful of words. And he’s cute (a pediatrician once stopped me in the street to inform me of this) and he has good energy so it’s a pleasant, yes, a pleasant experience hanging out with him so much.

RESOLUTIONS REVIEW

1. Resolution 1 was to maintain my performance practice at around an average of a gig a week.
   I managed to do this across the year, with a few week-or-two breaks around work (or holiday) commitments. Some weeks I performed twice, very occasionally thrice and – once, during a quick trip to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe – 11 times, including the worst gig I’ve ever had (so far).
   I performed a work-in-progress version of an hour long show at the Lambeth Fringe in October, I performed 45 mins of naked (socks and shoes stayed on) “Flat Earth conspiracy theory” themed poetry at the Edinburgh Fringe and I gigged all over London and the South, and a little further afield.
   Oh, and I got to the Semi-Finals of THREE different comedy competitions!
   The performance practice is going well.
   Not well financially but satisfyingly, constructively, enjoyably. Yes.
2. Watch more films/movies.
   I did this! I set up a Letterboxd account, so go and look at that if you want more details.
   During the first half of the year, my infant son and I spent a lot of time going to baby-friendly cinema events (which he eventually aged out of), so my year of film watching is very much uneven across the year, but I hit my target of a film a fortnight and then some!
   Two resolutions in, two successes!
3. Visit at least one new interesting place.
   I managed to visit a few new places this year! I did it!
   I did a couple of gigs in places I’d never been to, including Huddersfield (it went well!), Watford (it went ok!) and Dover (it did not!). I also ended up going on a very exciting trip in December (due to my partner attending an overseas conference), so I outdid Huddersfield at the last minute by going to Rio de Janeiro lol. (Not trying to brag, sorry if it seems like I am.)
4. visit a museum or gallery every month
   I think I did this, but (honestly) I wasn’t counting. I spent quite a bit of time in the Tate Modern and I have a library membership at the V&A so have been there a few times, too. I probably did this, tbh. But if I didn’t, it would have been very close indeed.
5. more music and sound play (in public?)
   I haven’t got any better at any musical instruments and I haven’t improved at the theramin I acquired in 2024 at all, but I have started doing musical comedy performances at my gigs sometimes, which is technically a victory for this resolution, though might not be a victory for my performance practice lol haha oh no.
6. make my performances weirder
   I’ve done this a lot! Poetry, including naked poetry once! Quick change! Costumes! Characters! Songs! Musical instruments! Audience interaction! Being sincere!
   I can definitely go weirder, and plan to try to study clowning at some point and in some way this year, but I’m very very very happy with the journey my performance practice continues to be on.
7. more foreign language study
   Completely failed at this again. Really need to think about how I’m going to reintroduce this to my life post having a child. I’ve been able to get regular exercise back into my routine after struggling to find space for that (not a resolution), but this is something I’ve not yet managed to do.
   If you have any thoughts/ideas/help for this (other than “move to a different country”, which isn’t an option rn), please stick them in the comments. Especially if you know someone willing to do Spanish conversation practice in South London on a time swap basis, I think that’s probably what I need! I have a TEFL qualification, if that helps? Please?
8. be more authentic to self
   I would say I failed at this. I quietly published a manifesto about this blog’s aims, and I started talking about being non-binary in my stand-up, but I (unfortunately) have been working in a very conservative corner of my industry the past couple of years, so until I manage to figure out regular work in another field (or another end of the same field), then I’m still having to dress conservatively (i.e. the clothing-genitalia alliance) and pretend to be comfortable with conservative attitudes and ideas on a very regular basis.
   So another failure. Yes.
9. play more
   I’ve absolutely done this! I mean I have played with my infant (now toddler) child, with my dog (though he could do with a bit more solo attention this year!) and with my performance practice, I don’t mean that I’ve gotten into anything salacious, as I’m aware that “play” is often the preferred verb for the kink community. I’ve played, yes. I haven’t played, but I have played.
10. make/see more friends
    I suppose technically I’ve done this, but I don’t really feel like I’ve been surrounded by people. And though I don’t think I want to feel like I’m surrounded by people, I think I’ve done something bluntly social at least once a month, which might not sound like a lot for any party people out there, but it does mean I’ve seen a few people I haven’t seen much for a few years, and it means I’ve had a few daytime coffees with people I hadn’t previously had daytime coffees with. Better, I think. So a pass on this one, I think, though not a distinction…

OVERALL FINAL COMMENTS

I’ve now been living in 2026 for a few days, so this is all old hat. Stop living in the past, scott manley hadley. 2025 is over!

However, I think 2025 may be the first year of my life in which I didn’t make a major decision I hadn’t already begun to regret by its end.

Sure, there are some major things I did in previous years that I still regret, and (over time) there may be things I did last year that turn out to be an error (e.g. I joined the Green party lol).

But, as it stands, I made no major changes to my life that I already yearn to undo. Changes and mistakes from past years, yes, sure, I absolutely wake up crying about on the regular. Shame and regret and humiliation abound. But not because of anything I did in 2025. Which, at some level, is progress.

This was very close to not being the case, actually – I was invited to interview for a full time job at one point (I didn’t apply for it!), which I would have felt obliged to take had it been offered to me. It wasn’t, though, which was lucky, because I didn’t want it. The idea of doing that job, for the week or so between the interview and finding out I wasn’t being offered it, kept me feeling awful. I didn’t want it, but I would have ignored my instincts and made a terrible decision, yet again. The relief that flooded me after that call was one of the best feelings I’ve felt in a long time, and yet I don’t feel super great about myself for having kept that decision out of my own hands. There’s still stuff to work on. There is still better internal listening to be done…

Ultimately, though, I think I want 2026 to be very similar to 2025. And I don’t think I’ve ever really wished that of a year before!

And then in 2027 I can begin to reverse some of those historic missteps. But not yet. Not yet. No.