2025: creating plastic parts, canvassing for climate, and contemplating what lasts.

Somewhere over the course of this year, I vowed to live more contemplatively. I realized I took in a lot of information, but I rarely took the time to think about it and make sense. I want to live more consciously, and that takes contemplation too. This year-in-review is mostly for me to make sense of the last year, but I am glad you, dear reader, are along for the ride.

2025 was a year. I do not like to qualify times as “good year” or “bad year” because time is time, and things happen and change regardless. If we get into defining times as good or bad, then we can expect the next shoe to drop or something good to happen (although it seems people get into bad modes where they expect bad things to happen during bad times, which can be a self-fulfilling prophecy).

Much of 2025 was characterized by insecurity. It felt like my family, my company, and my country were one major adverse event away from being in serious trouble. It is a hard feeling to live with.

I felt the insecurity of the country. The early part of 2025 was defined by the consequences of Donald Trump being elected in the prior November. I remember being in the car and listening to the radio when the first tariffs were levied against Canada, and it was the only thing people were talking about in conversation and in live media. We put the news on in the afternoon when the counter tariffs were announced, and my then 9-year-old son thought that the trade war meant we were at war. The 51st state comments by Trump did not help me convince my son or myself that this was not an act of war.

The Central Group, the company I am a part of, was deeply affected, being a Canadian manufacturer of corrugated board and printed products, and importing inputs and products from Canada and China into the US. Every one of our clients, both American and Canadian (because of the counter tariffs) requoted and rethought every design we had in the works, or they regularly reordered.

Things happened in 2025, so I thought it would be good to look back at the things I did, events I was a part of, experiences I had, and media I discovered.

Professionally

This last year has been one of the best for professional growth.

I fulfilled one of my career goals, which was to design an injection-molded part. At the Carleton University School of Industrial Design, we learned how to design plastic parts, and our assignments were mass-produced consumer products. But at the end of our schooling, a professor said that only a select few of us would design an injection-molded part that is actually produced. Injection molding requires tooling that costs $10,000 to $100,000+ and is only suitable for products made in high volumes. I made it a mission to be one of those select few.

I had designed some injection-molded parts prior, but nothing came of it. In 2024, The Central Group merged with Blake Jarrett and Company, and they had a project in the works that needed to be converted from blow molding to injection molding. It was important to use injection molding best practices to keep costs down. The previous design had a complex mechanism that we were going to simplify using the advantages of injection molding.

I redesigned all the parts and mechanisms, and the prices came out lower. A big win!

I traveled to Shanghai and was driven out to the manufacturer’s location in Zhangjiagang, China. This was another highlight of my career. It was preceded by a fair amount of anticipatory anxiety, but it was amazing once I got started on my journey. I had worked with this team for years, and they treated me well, and I fell in love with the fresh, healthy, and authentic Chinese food.

Everything went well. We made minor improvements to the mold and sorted out the packaging. My trip saved weeks of back-and-forth communication.

Since that experience, I have been doing the bulk of the injection-molded part design at The Central Group. We have had medium-scale, high-volume opportunities and have collaborated use injection molding to cut part count and ease assembly.

A late-year highlight was getting published in PLANT: Canada’s Manufacturing Voice. Check out the article here. The article was based on my observations during my trip to China. I contrasted the Chinese manufacturing industry with Canadian manufacturers I have worked for and with for my entire career as an industrial designer. I hope to continue to write for PLANT and help Canada’s manufacturers improve their businesses and the industry because I owe them a lot, and I respect the people of the industry and believe they deserve better treatment than they are currently getting.

Another late-year highlight was presenting at The Central Group’s first annual Design Summit. I presented how I and people in our department use AI models to accelerate our workflow and improve our work product. I also cautioned against some of the downsides to AI and shared one of our biggest AI failures (translating an instruction sheet to French) and how it was important that a human was in the loop (it was reviewed by a native French speaker).

A nice policy emerged from the summit: the 10-80-10 rule. If you use the AI, you should be doing the first 10% and the last 10%. It is important that a person uses their expertise to prompt the model and evaluate its output to see if it aligns with our values and meets our standards.

I cannot ask for a better year professionally. I grew, and I had the opportunities to contribute to interesting and large-scale projects.

Philosophy, Ethics, and Politics

The first months of 2025 were marked with tension and insecurity as the consequences of Donald Trump’s victory in November 2024 came into view.

It was clear Canada was in for a tough time, and I needed to become civically informed and involved. With the federal Conservatives up double digits in the polls, I could see a right-wing populist wave sweeping across Canada as it did in the United States, and sweeping away climate change policies, which are important to me and the future.

I listened to Mark Carney before he announced his run for the Liberal leadership. Watching him on podcasts, I was impressed by his positive thoughts on climate change; it was the first time I felt climate change was a solvable issue. I became a Liberal member shortly after his victory to become the federal Liberal leader.

One of the most rewarding things of 2025 was my political activity: door-to-door canvasing, attending a rally and a debate watch party, eventually a victory party. It was wonderful to connect with campaign staff and fellow volunteers who came from different lives and stages, united by various reasons for supporting the Liberals: from childcare to electing a competent technocrat.

During the campaign, I discovered the “Curse of Politics” podcast by Air Quotes Media, and it has been a weekly joy for me ever since.

I am trying to invest my time and energy in acts that are meaningful and reflect my values. Improving my community and helping my fellow citizens is a core value, and political engagement became one way to live that out.

I also read several political books in 2025: “Values” by Mark Carney, “A Promised Land” by Barack Obama, and “Coming Up Short” by Robert Reich. All very center-left, so maybe I should read other perspectives in 2026. They highlighted how difficult governance is, how easily principled concerns for average citizens can be sidelined by immediate economic pressures, and how climate change might be solvable with the right approach.

2025 was the year I turned forty, and I find my personal ethics moving from cripplingly empathetic to doing what needs to be done for the betterment of all. Hard choices need to be made, and some boundaries need to be rigid. I can appreciate the leaders I read about needing to be more stern governors than their empathetic, public-service oriented hearts want to be.

Another source of political and ethical insight has been the “David Frum Show” published by The Atlantic. He often records from Prince Edward County, where my family cottage was when I was growing up, which is always nice to hear about. I had the opportunity to return there for the wedding of my cousin Andrew and his bride, Hillary.

Spiritually

I started 2025 struggling with stress, anxiety, and a detachment from my higher power. Stress in the period from November 2024 to February 2025 left me feeling scared and vulnerable, and my body had no tolerance for stress, giving me physical effects and taking away my appetite.

Family, meditation, exercise, and my primary care doctor got me through that challenging time, as well as the “Soul Boom” podcast by Rainn Wilson and “Blocks” podcast by Neal Brennan.

The guests and the hosts were vulnerable about their times of hardship and highlighted that a combination of mental health and spiritual health was the only way through. By spiritual health, I just mean your connection to the world around you; it does not need to mean believing in souls or God. Positive spiritual health is characterized by meaning, clarity, growth, and love, while negative spiritual health is coloured with nihilism, self-deception, repetition, and resentment.

I had two big spiritual revelations this year. These are not prescriptive; they came to me and make sense with my belief system, but your mileage may vary.

The first spiritual revelation was that the afterlife is simply the reverberations of our actions in our physical lives. For example, I listen and appreciate the classic rock that my dad used to love (he has passed away), and I get the sense that he is with me as I listen.

I am unsure if our consciousness continues on and we continue to have experiences after death. I find the end of my and my loved ones’ consciousnesses quite scary, and it is comforting to think of my consciousness and my loved ones’ spirits lasting forever, but I have come to terms with the fact that I will not know if that is the case until my life ends.

What I do know is that my spirit will continue on in the people I have made an impression on and the consequences of my actions. It has refocused my values to things that will have lasting and positive impacts.

The second spiritual revelation was that the universe is a stream leading from the past to the future and is naturally progressive. The future will be better for conscious creatures in the future than it has been in the past.

What proof do I have for this positive bent to history? Nothing concrete. I take it on faith. Evolution, history, knowledge, and technology have made things progressively better, but that is not proof that it will always get better.

The second part of this belief is that people with bad intentions can paddle against the stream, and they create momentary eddies and backflow, but the stream quickly wipes out any trace of those people. If I choose to paddle with the stream, the results of my actions will travel far down the stream and strengthen the flow towards positive results.

I remember where and when this came to me: I was walking to the back gate of our condominium in the spring. Nothing about a higher power has ever felt truer than that thought, and it’s stuck with me.

Health & Fitness

I wish I made more progress in this area of my life in 2025.

I have continued strength training and am lifting more than ever. At my height of the health journey, I was consistently going three times a week, had a workout plan, and kept records for progressive overload of my lifting. I had a period of inconsistency where I was going to the gym once a week, but I am getting back to form, going at least 2, often 3 times a week, and tracking my full set personal records (PRs) and going for the same or more the next time.

I was losing weight rapidly in the second half of 2024 and a few months into 2025. That weight loss was both healthy and unhealthy. I started losing weight as soon as I started strength training. Then the stress and anxiety started getting to me, and I was losing an unhealthy amount of weight week to week.

Necessary changes in my medication meant that I started gaining weight in 2025. My body composition is better, and I am the proudest of my body than at any time in my adult life because of the weightlifting, but I own the fact that I am obese and need to do something about it.

My son has asked when I will get thinner because he sees me going to the gym, which comes with a mix of heartbreak, shame, and encouragement for me. Maybe it is time to start thinking about medication-assisted weight loss.

Creatively

In my artistic endeavors and creativity in my job and side hustles, 2025 was the best of times and the worst of times.

I have still not published my book: Tesselation: Book One of The Never Born Saga. It is a sci-fi book with fantasy elements and a strong, female character that could be a great example for young people.

If there is something the universe constantly whispers in my ear to do, it is publishing my book and starting work on volume two. The manuscript has been ready for a long time (over a year), and the last illustration is done. Whatever is stopping me is a mental block. I need people in my circle to encourage me and hold me accountable.

I have been doing far less writing than I ever have. Building Brand Marketing Blog and Supersportiva by learning topics through writing articles was some of the most creatively fulfilling work in my life. The content on Brand Marketing Blog seemed genuinely helpful and meaningful to a handful of people. But those ventures peaked years ago.

AI has changed the game for informational writing, and I am not sure pushing articles out is worthwhile. I do not even know if anyone but the LLMs will benefit from continuing to make articles; I know I will not benefit.

There was an inflection point in April of 2023, a few months after ChatGPT (GPT 3.5) was released, where my readership dropped off on both sites. Since then, I have done a lot of experimentation with LLMs, and I do not think informational writing (aside from breaking news journalism and non-fiction books) can be done better than search engines highlighting articles vs. an LLM just giving a specific answer. A person would come across a concept they did not understand, and a search engine takes them to an article I wrote for a general audience. Now, an LLM can draft a tailored article to every user and cut out the search engine as the intermediary.

I was a big user of tech how-to guides, Stack Overflow, and Reddit. I achieved some amazing technological feats with that. But had to skim and hunt for the nugget of information relevant to my problem and evaluate the credibility of the writer. It was time-consuming and felt like a brick wall in my progress.

Now I ask an LLM (Claude is my current favourite), I get the answer, I try it, if it does not work, I feed the feedback into the LLM, and it gives me a better answer. It feels like the difference between having a printed encyclopedia vs a tutor when trying to do your homework.

Because of that sharp change, I am not investing time in informational writing, which was my most fulfilling creative outlet. I have switched to maker projects, tech projects, and art.

The highlight of the year creatively was starting the drawing club at The Central Group. From the word go, it got a great response. People were eager to sign up, anticipating it, and thankful that I was organizing it.

We have produced some amazing art and gotten to know each other and our styles very well. I have done some sketches I am proud of, and I am glad I am continually doing art. The forcing function of being the organizer and having people to keep me accountable was what I needed to do art.

Technologically

I was tempted to put this stuff in the creative category because it has scratched an itch that was previously fulfilled by creative endeavours.

For years, I have hosted my websites on a web server based on a template from Bitnami. In 2025, I rebuilt my web server. I started with a base install of Debian and added services one by one until I had an ultra-efficient and fast web server. I cut my hosting costs by 2/3rds.

AI has been a vital part of executing this. I had a back-end developer who would help me through the odd problem. Now it feels like I have a pro back-end developer beside me who cannot get annoyed, no matter how dumb, repetitive, and lazy my questions are. I have achieved more than I thought possible.

Would I feel comfortable doing this professionally? No. I don’t know what I don’t know. There could be a gaping vulnerability. But goofing around with my simple websites was a great playground to learn. I know more about Linux than I ever have.

Speaking of Linux, this year I used a Raspberry Pi 5 to set up a retro game console, and another one to create a Network Attached Storage (NAS) device to back up my family’s phones and computers.

I have also continued improving my home server. This year, I accidentally destroyed it and didn’t have a backup (facepalm!). While recovering, I got frustrated that it barely did anything useful for me. Sure, it backs up my laptop and offloads a bunch of old files, but it could and should be doing more interesting things as it just sits there.

Enter N8N, a tool to automate digital tasks. It was frustrating to set up, but now my server checks RSS feeds for articles I’d like, posts to social media from a chat interface, and monitors my web server. I’m happy it’s finally doing some interesting things, and I am just scratching the surface of N8N.

Conclusion and What’s Next

The best word I can describe 2025 with is sobering. It was a stressful year where the world felt scary, challenging, and filled with hostile forces and people. It was made clear that things could get really bad without some intervention and preparation. As hard as it was to live through, it made it clear that sitting on the sidelines, making excuses, and being lazy was an indulgence no longer going to be acceptable. Action was required.

I would like 2026 to be marked by preparation and action. I am going continue being politically involved. I am going to get physically stronger and leaner. I am going to get more financially sure-footed. I will be more prepared for career opportunities. I am going to create and publish more.

I hope you will join me and encourage me!