Cresting the far side of McLaren Park on the San Francisco Cross Town Hike.

52 Good Things from 2025

The 19th year of my annual gratitude practice, now spanning 990 good things.

I finished this list on time. I honestly am not sure if that has ever happened before.

I started writing these annual gratitude lists in 2007 and since then they’ve matured into cognitive dissonance exercises that pit a positive reality against my problem-oriented perception.

What happens when I make these lists is that I start out thinking the year was full of problems and then come to realize that it was actually full of wins. That was true again in 2025, although I do at least expect it.

The rules of the list are to find 52 things from my year to be grateful for. That’s one per week. If I achieve that quantity, then I have to face that it was a good year.

Here are my prior lists: 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2016–2019, 2013–15, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, and 2007.

Writing

I was in a better writing groove during the first ¾ of the year, and then in a prolific groove in the last few weeks thanks to our in-development writing app, medium.com/tk. This writing covers a lot of highlights from the year.

[1] Saunter. Did the 32-mile Great Saunter around the perimeter of Manhattan for the sixth time and wrote about it.

[2] Recipes. I (successfully?) made the case for cooking the turkey the day before. Privately, I also tested, mastered, and wrote up family recipes for caramel nut pie, cheese cake, and sesame noodles.

[3] No Kings. Went to and wrote about two No Kings gatherings. I like being part of people looking out for other people and both of these delivered. First one and second one.

[4] Product Reviews. Launched a new Medium publication, Casual Product Reviews, and wrote one piece for it about the exact electric head shaver every bald guy should use in the shower. Please submit reviews of your favorite or least favorite purchases.

[5] Value of diversity. We updated our statement about why diversity matters so much right now and why it is fundamental to the Medium mission. Credit to lots of people at Medium for helping me polish this. FWIW, I do have a prior version of this type of post that I wrote for my last company in 2012. Same values, just more refined now.

[6] Fell in a hole, got out. The inside look at a financial and product turnaround at Medium. Probably the most honest that I’m allowed to be about work.

[7] The people vs. AI. I love writing explainer posts like this one about a new standard for licensing content to AI companies. They are complicated and nuanced topics that aren’t yet well understood.

[8] Some writing advice. I made the case for having lots of drafts as the key to a productive writing habit. Along the way I coined the phrase, Inspiration Fishing, which is a succinct way to explain why this works. If you have lots of drafts, it’s easy to fish one out that inspires you in the moment.

[9] Drafted a book and more. As I write this, our TK app is in such a strange state. It’s on the one hand not ready for many more users and on the other hand enormously powerful. I’ve started a Zettelkasten, gotten back into morning pages, turned morning pages into the kickoff of an all day journaling routine, and, drafted 15% of a book in one afternoon.

Acquisitions.

Things I bought or got that I think will bring many years of joy.

[10] Gold record. A framed gold record for the Santana album, Festival, was given to my dad for his work on the recording/mastering side. I requested it as two-part of an homage to our dads. The other half of the homage is a round saw from Sarah’s dad’s furniture business. We had that framed in the style of a gold record and the two now hang next to each other.

[11] Keyboard. I upgraded to a mechanical keyboard, the Keychron Q6 Max. I’m not sure if you (or I) need this top of the line model. But there is something about the mechanical click that helps reinforce my typing flow. Mechanical keyboards are taller so I also pair this with a wrist rest.

[12] Zwift stationary bike. I’m still a big Zwifter because I like 30 minute intense workouts and also generally don’t work out until it’s dark out. But it dawned on me how much I was paying my bike mechanic for the damage I was doing to my road bike by having it double as a stationary bike (hint: salt from sweat). So now I have a dedicated stationary bike that is custom built for the Zwift experience. It’s been great.

[13] Zebra G7 0.7mm pen. This is my new favorite pen.

[14] Apple TV 4k. It finally dawned on me that I don’t have to accept my “smart” TV’s laggy, ad-filled, janky operating system and could instead pay extra to upgrade from a dumb-smart TV to a smart-smart TV. The Apple TV puck is a worthy fix.

[15] Nintendo Switch 2. I still don’t have time for long video game obsessions, so my personal favorite has been getting extended family to play Just Dance.

Summer Camp

We open our house all summer to guests and contribute very casual hosting. That means that we work all day—so entertain yourself during the day with swimming, video games, or (especially for teenagers) bed rotting w/o any parents to guilt trip you. In the evenings we eat ice cream, swim some more, play mini golf, try to get you to watch our favorite movies from the 80s. This was inspired by one of my uncles in Oregon who hosted my family many times by similar make-yourself-at-home-and-i’ll-see-you-when-I-see-you etiquette and a former O’Reilly coworker who explained how they did this for their nieces and nephews.

[16] 31 overnight guests. Super special to get both California nephews especially since one of them can drive our car now. It’s hard to count the full 31 though but here’s a taste: 7 Brooklyn neighbors, Marci, DC friends, more CA friends, my mom, Sarah’s family (7), Adam. It kind of books up early with family and then wandering travelers fill in the gaps.

[17] Revisited the classics. These movies are still great: Ferriss Bueller, Spinal Tap, Wargames, Beverly Hills Cop, Freaky Friday.

[18] County Fairs. We went to the Ulster County Fair to see pig racing and to the Duchess County Fair to eat junk food.

[19] Upstate Art Weekend. This was epic. I just had no idea how big this is and how amazing some of the installations are.

[20] Horseback riding. Sarah had never been on a horse, so I found two places that’ll put you on a horse and take you around their trails.

[21] Gym triathlon. I organized a very, very short triathlon with my CA nephews. Unfortunately the youngest one won and gloated about it for the rest of the trip. Distances were half mile treadmill, 2 mile stationary bike, ten laps of the pool. Winning time was 15 minutes including transitions.

[22] Bear sighting. Saw and filmed a bear walking by our house. This is the holy grail of wildlife sightings here. Sarah’s mom had seen one on the other side of the house and our neighbors have had their bird feeders rummaged. But this is the first time for us. It’s not like we are in the wilderness. Sure, we’re on well water, but we also do get gigabit internet.

[23] Water Park. I almost lost my uncle privileges by not forcing the kids to wear enough sunscreen. But overall, SplashDown Beach was a nice regional water park.

More Walking

We like to walk.

[24] SF Crosstown Trail. Organized a group of friends to walk cross-wise through San Francisco. It was an all day affair, but also a lot of fun. Got to introduce people to one of my old dentists! Next time I’ll try to get two of my dentists there.

[25] Huckleberry Point Hike. Despite loads of hiking and backpacking in my life, I’ve never been on a real hike in New York state. So Sarah and I did this one in the Catskills. Great view.

[26] Saunter Training. My favorite part of the Saunter is that it encourages us to get out and walk more just to acclimate the legs. Leading up to the Saunter we did six walks totaling 45 miles.

Favorite Media

This is what stood out to me.

[27] Movies. House of Dynamite, Green Book, Highest 2 Lowest, One Battle After Another, Crazy Stupid Love, Freaky Friday (2003)

[28] TV. The Eternaut, Adolescence, The Diplomat, Endeavor, Severance, The Pitt, Murderbot, Slow Horses S5

[29] Top 500 Albums. As a conversation starter, I started asking people what their favorite albums of all time were. That led to list making and then listening and now the start of my own top 500 list to rival the Rolling Stones magazine one (so far I’m up to 60 on my list). I like the that the bar is high without creating scarcity. It’s hard to find a full album that you like, but when you do there is definitely room on a top 500 list. Lemme know what your favs are and why.

[30] Books. Digital Zettelkastan by David Kadavy. Last Ronin (middle aged super hero story). Incal. 20 Days in Turin (translated Italian horror that basically predicts the dark side of oversharing/blogging).

New York City

I moved to NYC in 2010, then immediately went half time back to SF. Then went full time NYC again in 2016 and then somehow found a way back out of the city again in 2021. In short, I’m not the best at being a New Yorker. But when I’m in the city, I do love it.

[31] Liberty. I’ll admit that I’m so clueless that I didn’t even know the Liberty were the defending champs until we went to their home opener and it started with a ring ceremony. I’m very pro WNBA now though—the games are so high level and the crowd vibe is all in.

[33] Oh Mary! Unhinged in the best way. Also, in college, I got my computer science degree from a 16 person computer science department and one of my classmates from back then threw that education away, got into standup comedy, then acting, and happened to be playing Lincoln the day we want.

[34] The Morgan Library. Scott had prepared a personal tour for a few of us and gave his own rendition of Morgan as a hoarder of books. Which is exactly what I would do (am doing?).

[35] Mother/son day in Manhattan. For part of my mom’s birthday weekend we went to a museum and debated art pieces together, then went out to a French restaurant for lunch.

[36] Cookie Party. We’re part of a community of grizzled tech people and we hosted the NY location for a cookie party just a few weeks ago. Great way to see people.

Travel

Got to use my passport, which means I also successfully remembered where my passport was. (There is still a missing passport somewhere in my house)

[37] Mexico City. This is the city I most want to visit again. Food was great, cafe culture was great, easy to get to. We’d also visited family in Ajijic beforehand, but then had a great exploration of MC, taking the subways, doing food tours, seeing the history.

[38] Lucha Libre. Special thumbs up for the wrestling in Mexico City. I’ll use this word again, it was unhinged.

[39] Paris/Vienna. We did a combo work and vacation trip that started with visiting the Medium team in Paris. Finally got to the Musee d’ Orsay and Monet Museum. In Vienna, we drank so much coffee, saw more museums, saw a friend, shopped. Here’s a funny, to me, global commerce observation. There’s a sweater that I like from an American outdoor brand (Orvis) that they discontinued. But the exact same sweater was for sale at a bunch of Paris and Vienna boutique hipster stores under several different boutique labels. It’s all coming from the same factory, just getting labeled differently.

[40] Fondation Louis Vuitton. Special thumbs up for this Paris stop. Saw the Richter exhibit which was great. I just generally like seeing a full display of the life’s work of an artist (like the Guggenheim does). But mainly, the architecture of this Gehry building was impressive.

[41] Tour of the Kunsthistorisches Museum. This was a case of special access. Our friend Lisa teaches art history for the university and gave us a private tour with her own version of the history. Delightful.

[42] SF Zoo & Academy of Sciences. Did field trips at the beginning and middle of the year with my middle niece. These were the first two times we ever did anything with her w/o her parents and I think we all had a great time.

[43] First Bass Pro Shop. Sarah and I have driven by this one in Manteca dozens of times but finally stopped inside. We had no idea. This is what retail should be.

[44] Banff. Took a trip to Banff with friends and hiked around. Chalk another win up for traveling to parks in shoulder season. Easy to get around, had a great time.

Family

A lot of this is covered in the summer camp section, but there were even more family highlights.

[45] Chhange Banquet in Honor of Sarah’s Mom. She’s been a volunteer, board member, and occasional interim executive director at a museum (Chhange) that educates about genocides. Younger me would have focused on how much excellent food the banquet served (and the quantity!). But it was also pretty special to see how much she accomplished and see her rightfully honored.

[46] My mom released an album. This is retirement done right. She’s a creative and turned her retirement from elementary school teacher into a full time art career. She’s always been an abstract painter and shows all over the Northeast. But as a hobby she got into learning piano, transitioned into composing, and then ended up with enough compositions for an album. So she got a professional pianist to record the compositions and her music teacher to master the recordings, and now she’s on Bandcamp.

[47] New niece! Now we’ve got three!

[48] Hosting. We hosted xmas and thanksgiving. Lots of cooking.

Work

This was my third year at Medium and are starting to see the benefit of the financial turnaround because we’re building and innovating again.

[48] MediumTK. Broke ground on a new writing app. I’m addicted and wrote slightly more than 10,000 words one recent day. That’s a lot!

[49] Full speed. I think we’re running at full speed. Got the right people in the right roles and finally articulated how we want to work. That shows up in a lot of places now.

[50] In-persons. I’m merging four great experiences. As always, we meet as a company twice a year and both were intensely memorable: Rhode Island and Tucson. Then in NYC, we hosted two private dinners to hear how other people are seeing the future of the Internet in the AI era. That’s also the first time I ever met our board member, Colin, in person.

Health

[51] More weight loss. Lost another six pounds the easy way.

[52] Strava. 120 hours over 160 activities (mostly Zwift). That’s less than last year, but I did get in two mega walks (Saunter and Cross Town), and am currently in a very good weight lifting groove.

Honorable mentions: Hudson Horrors Roller Derby, Eastville Comedy Open Mic, Sugar Mountain Recording Studio moved to Saugerties which means my cousin and her family are easy to visit and easy to leave Eloise with.

The homage to our dads.