2025 Mid-Year Review
For the past few years, I’ve written end-of-year reviews reflecting on my work and creative life. But this year, I want to start checking in mid-year as well.
I’ve found having a zoomed-out perspective of my output is helpful. Those end-of-year reviews are where I reflect on what I’ve accomplished and muse about the year ahead. But I’ve realized the feedback loop of a year is too long.
Having a six-month recap will help me reflect mid-year and make necessary pivots and changes before they potentially get out of hand. It is also a way to be accountable to those who support my work via Patreon. Thus it serves two purposes: it helps me reflect on my progress and adjust course mid-stride if needed, and it demonstrates to my Patreon supporters that we’re moving towards to the goal of making artifacts and producing work that matters.
2025 in Numbers, So Far
- Posts published: 18
- Total words published: 26,994, inclusive of podcast transcripts but not of this post or July’s Genius Loci
- Podcast episodes published: 2
- YouTube videos made: 2
Reflecting on the Last Six Months
How have we done so far? In December 2024’s recap, I wrote these principles for 2025:
- Focus. Family and your work come first.
- Simplify. You’re doing too much.
- Synergy. Narrow your topical focus.
- “Keep the main thing the main thing.”
With the first half of 2025 now in the books, I can report that I’ve held true to these principles.
I’ve focused more energy on my personal work, cut many unnecessary obligations from my life, and narrowed my topical focus (more on this shortly). I’ve also taken concrete steps to “keep the main thing the main thing.”
I’ve already published more words in the first half of this year than in all of 2024 combined. That low bar was set because my son was born last year, and time became fleeting. Now I’ve found my rhythm again.
And yet, I still feel somehow unproductive. My son had several bouts of illness, my mom visited for an extended period, and some last-minute day job work sucked the air out of my lungs. More than just a time suck, these setbacks were physically/mentally/emotionally draining and they didn’t create the conditions for doing good work.
The Main Thing - On Mountains
But I did put in significant work to keep the main thing the main thing. My mountain research — and all its related work like book proposals and posts — is the “main thing.”
It is early yet, but having a singular focus feels invigorating and clarifying. With a singular focus, it is easy to see what is (and what isn’t) worth doing. I’ve largely stopped podcasting and creating YouTube videos on photography.
Strangely, this focus also opens up a world of possibility. Rather than being constricting, it is liberating — freeing me from the tyranny of choice, the tyranny of and overactive mind.
To help keep myself on track, I’ve started a new podcast/blog called On Mountains where I’m publishing my notes and my mountain-related work. This is both an attempt to focus and to build an audience around this subject-area.
To advance this project, I needed to cut out the extraneous work from my life: the unrelated YouTube videos, the unrelated blogging, and the reading/thinking/writing on unrelated topics.
That’s not to say I’m on a strict mountain diet. I do need some reading and writing outside this world to draw new connections and dream up new ways of thinking about my material. But non-mountain work should always serve as a means to an end, as an exercise in thinking, and not as an end in itself.
This shift makes strategic sense too. A glance at my internet traffic shows too much attention lands on work unrelated to my main research. I need to offset that by building a body of work that attracts the audience I actually want to serve. For example, photography work, while I find it interesting and valuable, it doesn’t necessarily advance my writing or mountain work.
Looking Ahead to the Next Six Months
I have a lot more planned for On Mountains this year.
I’m heading back to Bolivia to do more fieldwork at the Hill of the Skull in Quillacollo. I discuss my objectives in July’s Genius Loci post. But this work is related to On Mountains and my book proposal.
I also plan to publish more research notes on the On Mountains blog and interviews on its podcast.
The company Elevenlabs has an interesting AI voice clone product that I’m looking into as a possible way to narrate some of my written research notes for the podcast. No promises. This may or may not work depending on the quality. But I’m considering how this tool might help me further disseminate my work without more demands on my already-limited time. I really don’t have the time to record or edit thousands of words on Biblical exegesis every month, but the AI tool might render the process of complimenting text with audio effortless.
I’m looking into the same service to narrate my book The Hill of the Skull. If the quality of the audiobook is good, I’ll make it available to Patreon supporters free of charge.
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