Notes

Wow, what a year. On a personal note, it was good. The 3 and 5 year olds grew and developed, with the 5 year old going to 'big boy' school (and getting his first new big boy teeth in the process). I did some work to the back garden and kitchen. I got a new car, which on the surface sounds silly but as a big car guy, owning a Porsche is huge. And generally we ticked along nicely while the world was in flames.

On a professional note, in Q4 I changed roles at $company in order to be at home more, more focused and frankly have more sustained impact. My prior role, and for the last few years, I've been in a 'global' capacity. But past experience tells me that global = America. Which is exciting and impactful. But it's less exciting and the wrong end of impactful when you've a young family. I got advice to change things up, and so I did. And when I did, the person who gave me that advice reached out to give me a pat on the back. She knows what's up. So far so good on my 50+ person team. The culture is shifting nicely but they've been bereft of leadership for quite some time. Which means there's plenty of low hanging fruit for me to latch onto.

If I focus on family, we did well given I was away a lot and there are always external pressures on the family unit. We're very lucky that we're not over our skis on debt or anything. But my travel schedule, wife's schedule and general life coming-at-us vibe got big this year. Which was deeply compounded by my being in the US at least once per month. Doing almost no travel in Q4 was significantly noticeable by everyone. But, when my feet were on the soggy soil of Ireland, we spent a lot of it doing cool stuff as a group of lads. A lot with my brother, who is a willing participant in my enjoyment of motorsports. We spent a lot of time at Mondello Park watching drift bashes, professional series like Drift Masters or Rallycross, etc. The smell of the rubber, the atmosphere and the cheeky hot dog lunch really lights us up. So I'll be sure to do as much of that as possible in 2026.

Onto the things I liked the most in 2025:

  • Books: I honestly did not read anywhere near enough in 2025. I was a very poor year from that POV, mostly because I was so busy. But Playground by Richard Powers was my favourite of the year. Which makes sense given it's honours at the 2024 Booker Prize shortlist.
  • Music: I ebb and flow a lot but according to Apple Music, my year was dominated by metal/hard rock. And my most listened to album was Deftones' new release, Private Music. Which is a real genuine return to form for them. Although I've listened to it so much now that I can tell the formula they came up with and ran with through almost every song. So while it's an excellent collection of music, I don't think they quite harnessed the power of the album format on it.
  • Games: Gran Turismo 7. It's basically all I played this year. And even when I was on a plane, I played the Spec II mod of Gran Turismo 4 on an emulator via my Steam Deck. So I was really locked into that space. Even ending the year, I've bought more stuff to expand my sim rig.

Tabs

Tune

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