Leaving Behind 2025: Thinking Back on a Crazy Year

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Thinking back on the crazy year on the eve of the new year has become a normal part of ending the year off. Maybe this is because of the ingrained normalcy of thinking about life in these rigid structures that cannot change. The year has 365 days. A day is 24 hours. The year ends on 31 December at 23:59:59. The new year begins the at the very second that it is not longer 2025. But in that brief millisecond before the clock strikes midnight, that liminal in-between, is a moment that belongs neither to the new nor the old. It is a strange placeless millisecond that demands some contemplation.

What happened before that millisecond? What took place in the 31 536 000 seconds that preceded it? So many seconds, so many opportunities that were taken or left behind, slept on or used properly. It does not help to think about the moments lost, because that will make for more lost time, never to be lived. But what about those moments that were used properly and productively?

At the start of the year, 2025 January, everything looked possible. I was waiting for feedback on various projects: book chapters, work applications, my then PhD in progress, article feedback, and so much more. I was part of another PhD candidate’s trail defence, a mock run of the real thing, and in this process I took note of my own defence that was still a distant memory. Then came the constant travelling to and fro between my two homes, one with my close family, the other with my fiancé. She also had her own battles to manage, including dealing with my anxiety and her own.

Time at certain places ticked by slowly; each second felt like minutes. At other times, things moved too quickly. Deadlines creeped closer, new work jumped up, a horrible experience. Each second lasted milliseconds. The day did not have enough hours.

Then it was my turn to teach another module. I said yes to the invitation to teach a year earlier; now, I regretted that decision. While teaching, or in fact preparing to teach, my father was hospitalised, I had to rewrite portions of my PhD and I had to mark what felt like a million philosophy papers.

But so, time ticked on, slowly and surely, at times too fast, and then it was time: the biggest moment of 2025. It was morning, in August, I had to defend four years’ work, a PhD that was my own. After 40 minutes of stress and angst, they called me back into the room. “Welcome doctor,” they said.

But the year was not done. Even though I was now done with the four year struggle, I still needed to revise the document. But I also received news that I had to turn the PhD into a manuscript. I signed a contract with a fixed deadline amidst countless other deadlines. At first, the second half of the year, with its highest points, felt like a nightmare: where will I get the time to finish everything? In that brief moment of utter uncertainty and frustration, I felt like imploding. As if I would not finish anything. But somehow I did.

I submitted everything I had to in time. On time. Done. Life felt good, hard and hostile at times, but good. There is something satisfying about making a deadline. Deadlines keep you in lane, in place, grounded, and rooted in the thing you have to get done. Sometimes deadlines feel threatening and frightening. But it is in fact an invitation to keep one focused on the task at hand, or the various simultaneous tasks running concurrently to each other. We always say, “How do you eat an elephant? Piece by piece.” How do you finish projects that feel like you will not be able to get anything done? Piece by piece.

And here, I am sitting reflecting on the year that just passed. I am tempted to say that things moved so quickly. In various instances it did. It flew past me. But in other instances, it felt like a year loaded with so many things. If I had to count and spell them out, I will get lost between all of the writing, reading, planning, and importantly, all of the successes. Because while there were many missed opportunities, the successes outweigh all of the failures.

And this is the mindset that I will take into 2026: get stuff done.

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I hope that you can also think back on this year, holding onto everything that worked out. Because it is so much easier to think about everything you missed out on and count all of the failures. But if you consciously think about what worked out, what worked in very concrete ways, you will see just how much you grew even though it does not feel like it.

For now, happy last day of 2025, and enjoy moving through this liminal in-between into 2026!

All of the musings and writings are my own. The photographs are also my own, taken with my Nikon D300.