Month-in-Review Highlights: December 2025

An extremely bizarre gift item for sale in a local independent bookstore. So strange, I took a photo. Nevertheless, charmed, I returned to purchase it a few days later. It now lives on my desk by my keyboard. (Translation: I may be a small potato, but I believe in you.) Lausanne, Switzerland. December 4, 2025.

I postmortem each month shortly after it ends. Previously, I used these posts to hold myself accountable on progress toward my annual goals. Starting in January 2023, I broadened these posts to address more generally my observations and experiences for the month. (To read previous months’ reviews, click here.)

When I created my goals for 2025, I reduced the number and scope in comparison to previous years. I’m glad I did. When I reduced the list to the essentials and only the essentials—I even saw the aspirational goals as essential to try to hit—I ensured that everything I wrote down mattered to me and I ensured I didn’t hedge their scope to make room for other things on the burgeoning list.

I didn’t achieve everything I set out to achieve in 2025—some of the aspirational goals remain aspirational—but I gave every item on my list my best effort.

In these monthly wrap-ups, I never address progress on all of my goals or recount all of my activities. Some matters stay close to the vest, always. I do, though, like to share a few of the fun and general-public highlights. And for each December entry, I look back on the year more broadly, rather than my usual past-month focus.

Rest assured that December kept me busy on all the fronts, helped not least of all by the holiday season and my midmonth birthday.

I finished a first draft of a novel in December, only two days before the end of the year. I needed the win to rebuild my confidence. I’d put yet one more novel “in the drawer” as a failed attempt at midyear. I’m still in this, goshdarnit.

Throughout the year, I continued to build my community of serious writers. People with the same peculiar pursuit sustain me through the ups and downs of an effort that few people who don’t do it can understand. My local critique group, though tiny, is mighty, and it’s probably the best critique group I’ve ever had. My coterie of fellow genre authors who connect virtually every couple of weeks and banter in the group chat between sessions keep me smiling.

More of that in the year ahead.

I set a goal a year or two back to get to or participate in one cultural activity each month, at a minimum. I kept that up this year. (Most months, I exceeded the one-activity quota, too.) I find engaging with my fellow humans across art and performance and expression and through exhibits that expose me to history and culture and new ideas and perspectives nurtures me creatively and emotionally.

I had goals in 2025 to stay engaged with my personal connections near and far; I’ve learned that I can all-too-easily let them fade into the background if I don’t foreground them with intention. I don’t know if I can ever do “enough” in this regard. My relationships with the people who matter to me enrich my life and make everything worthwhile.

In a corollary vein, I intended to create a regular group activity with the people I know in my local community. I didn’t succeed. I still really want to make this happen. May 2026 be the year it comes to fruition.

I kept up with the blogging in 2025, despite sometimes wondering why I bother. Each time I question the time and commitment, though, someone comments on a post or responds to The Letter or messages me through the site. That moment of connection motivates me forward.

If you’re reading this, you’re one of those happy moments of connection for me. Thank you.