Dear 2025, as you come to a close, I have some thoughts.

And at first, I didn't really know what to say.

I was reflecting a little bit, listening to the letters I wrote 2021, 22, 23, 24, and to be honest, there's a bit of overlap between

them. I mean, a lot can happen in a year and a lot often does. There are ups and downs, highs,

lows, people that leave your life, people that arrive, there are wins, there are losses. That's every

year.

So what makes you different 2025?

Especially since in so many ways it feels like you were a mere continuation of last year.

This sequel to my new life in the Arizona desert.

Well, the answer reveals itself when one looks a bit deeper.

Do you ever find yourself so deep in the weeds that you don't realize you've simultaneously

wandered into the forest?

Become so consumed with the detail that for a period of time you

lost the frame.

Well, 2025, this year's been a lot of stepping back to see the frame, because the winds were all

downstream of my perceived setbacks.

Not some of them, by the way, all of them.

Born of the all-encompassing anguish that I'd felt in the moment.

When that aforementioned forest burns down, you don't immediately jump to, wow.

What a necessary, healthy part of the forest's growth cycle.

Now the land can go back again, fuller, stronger.

No, we see the flames, the destruction, and we flinch, we feel sad.

...