As the year winds down, I’ve been taking some time to reflect on the past 12 to 36 months and consider what 2025 might bring.

To guide this process, I’m exploring a few approaches:

• Reviewing my calendar from the past year to remind myself where I’ve spent much of my time, both personally and professionally.
• Re-reading journal entries from throughout the year. While I have fewer handwritten entries than I’d like, I’ve made a significant number of digital notes this year.
• Taking inspiration from Patrick Rhone’s approach by trying a couple of structured reflective activities, completing them over a few days in hour-long sessions.
• Working through a set of reflective questions to help prepare for 2025.

Each of these practices alone holds value, but I’m hoping the combination—bringing in different perspectives and methods—will help me form a more complete understanding of who I am and what I need moving forward.

While I view reflection as central to personal growth and development, I’m not someone who thrives with structured reflective activities. My usual approach is to write when the need feels pressing, letting my thoughts flow freely. This year-end exercise feels like new territory for me, and I’m curious about how the insights it generates will shape both the near future and the longer term.

Anyone thinking that moving to BlueSky or Threads will end up any different than the downfall of Twitter is dead wrong.

Remember, the fellow who started Twitter and sold it to the highest bidder also started BlueSky. And, the folks who run Threads also run the most detrimental-to-your-health platform in the history of the internet.

History repeats itself because we're collectively stupid and allow it to repeat.

Big Bang Theory characters in order of deepest character development and show impact:

1. Amy Farrah Fowler
2. Stuart
3. Raj
4. Penny
5. Bernadette
6. Howard
7. Leonard
8. Sheldon

In order of most annoying / rude / I could do without:

1. Sheldon
2. Howard
3. Bernadette
4. Raj
5. Kripke
6. Leonard
7. Penny
8. Stuart

Shortest to tallest:

1. Howard
2. Bernadette
3. Leonard
4. Raj
5. Amy Farrah Fowler
6. Penny
7. Sheldon

As an outsider I'll never understand any of the internal national politics of the United States of America. I can only try to infer based on what I see on the news, read in the paper, and hear from those I follow online.

With that said—I'm genuinely concerned for the U.S.A., and the global community.

In 2016, Trump being elected could be blamed on 1) not knowing any better, or 2) assuming it couldn't be as bad as 'they' say.

This time, there's absolutely no excuse.

Trump is a facist—this is clear and evident when you compare his words and actions against the facists we know from history. His claims indicate he wants to be a dictator, and that his own party can't even stop him—even if they wanted to, which they clearly don't.

As someone living in Canada, the closest neighbouring country and ally to the U.S.A., I'm watching with a careful eye at what comes next.