Twenty, twenty and five
Just started my second cup of coffee and checked off the day’s first to-do. Seeing as I planned to do this type of post last January for 2024, I figured I better get a move on before this year is over too. Here goes…
Getting Personal... 2025 marks 30 years since I exited high school and entered the workforce. More importantly, it meant celebrating a quarter of a century of marriage to my lovely wife. Serious landmarks and an amazing journey.
The Wins
- Got Game: The year started with an overall win. It had nothing to do with work, but my favorite football team dominated the playoffs and secured a commanding victory in the Super Bowl. Go Birds!
- Opting into AI Video: With advances in models like VEO 3 and Will Smith finally "eating spaghetti" correctly, it felt like the time to buy in. First venture has been a series of short-form 3D animated videos for a client that has been running since late summer. Excited to see where this goes next.
- Automating Automation: Running the self-hosted version of n8n has been a main stay. Connecting Notion webhooks to n8n has powered up my daily workflow significantly.
- Static Sites Holding Strong: When updating sites for clients, the static site approach still checks all the boxes. Pepper in a Lambda function or two, push deploy, and it just works.
- Model Hopping: The AI model race gives us users a fun problem to solve. Being able to bounce from model to model to get the desired result has become a key part of my workflow.
The Losses
- The Social Marketing Paradox: The classic small business dilemma: cutting marketing when revenue dips.
- Notion Mail: This had potential, but the lack of a unified inbox and restricted access for non-Gmail accounts created too many roadblocks to fully buy in.
- AI Fatigue: The sentiment of “I can do it myself with AI,” the proliferation of AI slop, and AI being shoved into features for no reason other than buzzwords.
- Not Enough Time Offline: Paddle boarding, hiking, strumming a tune, and sketching all happened this year… but not enough. Let’s all agree we need more of that in 2026.