2025 Annual Review Table of Contents

Every Annual Review that I publish on this blog contains 4 parts:

  1. What were my victories?
  2. What could have gone better?
  3. How many New Year’s Resolutions did I keep?
  4. What are my resolutions for next year?

To see all of my annual reviews, click here.

To use my workbook to create your own Annual Review, click here.

Part 1 – What were my victories of 2025?

This was a big year. I started the year dejected and dissatisfied. My career was on the skids, I was dissatisfied with my work, and I wasn’t feeling much momentum. In the first week of the year, we took a family vacation for birthdays, and I found my new purpose. This whole year has been full of momentum, ever since.

New Zealand Citizenship

It only took eight years, but we did it! Giving my children passports in one of the safest countries in the world has been the culmination of nearly a decade of effort. This is a victory that will benefit my family line for generations.

Pivoted Career into AI

Marketing had been boring to me for years, and I was stuck doing it poorly. It was only when I let it go completely that I could move into doing something new.

First I started https://GenAITraining.co.nz/. Then I joined Agentic Intelligence to deliver Ai Training workshops. I converted my IP into time capsules (a technique from Speakership) and stepped up to lead the Christchurch Ai Meetup Group. I joined the AI Forum and volunteered to lead a subcommittee.

Instead of needing to convince people why my work was valuable (a constant grind with marketing), with Artificial Intelligence I just play with new tools on the cutting edge, and talk about what I’m learning. There’s a lot of interest and appetite, and things are easier.

When I first got into marketing, I would say to people, ‘I make WordPress websites.’ They would say, ‘WordPress! I’ve heard of that! I can’t do that. Can you do that for me?’ and that kept my business going for a decade. Now I get that same level of interest and enthusiasm when I tell people I work in AI.

Healed from Injuries and Illnesses

I had a gnarly knee injury in January that took months to heal. The whole family had whooping cough for three months. Indi had pneumonia. And my elbows (of all things) both gave out, so I couldn’t do push-ups, pull-ups, or any of the bodyweight exercises I learned as an acrobat, the ones I am accustomed to doing every day of my life.

I was patient and diligent with my healing, and gave myself a goal of being fully healed by the Spring Equinox. Now I’m back in the gym twice a week, doing handstands and full sets of 20 pushups and 10 pullups.

Health is truly the greatest wealth. I’ve stayed in remission from my autoimmune disorder all year (I keep it in control with a restrictive diet) and I feel strong and full of vitality.

Gold Coast trip with Zaden

One of my annual healing remedies has been a sunshine trip in the depths of winter. Living on the South Island of New Zealand, the winter months in June and July get dreary. A couple of years ago, I started taking sunshine getaways to the Gold Coast in Australia, and this year I brought Zaden with me. He’s 17 now, and we got to spend a week together, leveling up on basic adulting.

Brought Johanna to church

When we moved to Christchurch last year, I started attending weekly church services again, after decades away from the religion of my youth. I’m still sorting through what this means for me, so I don’t write about it much (share your scars, and not your wounds, you know). If you’re curious, four of the 10 Books that Changed My Life were related to the early stages of this journey.

Johanna also grew up in the church (her parents were ministers in The Dispensable Church in Santa Fe, the city of Holy Faith) and six months after I started attending Arise in Christchurch, she started coming with me. It’s been a wonderful experience to share. I’ve introduced my kids to bible study during our homeschooling time – from a scholarly perspective, which is how I learned most of my biblical lore – and it’s become a wholesome companion to our family conversations.

Publishing and performing

I was in my element this year, living as a thought leader. (I went to school for it for three years, so it’s good to finally put all those skills to use.)

This year, I delivered or published:

  • 123 paid AI Training workshops
  • 43 coaching sessions
  • 41 free speeches
  • 7 paid speeches (some for top dollar)
  • 38 articles on this blog (syndicated as newsletters every week-ish)
  • 62 videos on my YouTube channel

I’ve also put together my new Ai Coaching Academy – to be launched next year. Stay tuned!

Part 2 – What could have gone better?

Illnesses took a long time to recover

Indi was in the hospital for two weeks with pneumonia. We all had whooping cough for the first three months of the year. My elbow and knee injuries kept me out of physical training for most of 2025.

It would have been better if recovery had not taken so long, but healing does not happen on your schedule. Patience is a virtue I spent a lot of time with this year.

Trading was a loss

After years of trading crypto as a hobby, I gave up completely this year. There were periods where I did well with my little pool of capital, but the market was terrible this year. I’ve made money shorting in bad markets before, but this year, all my techniques and indicators were unreliable. I am reading Fooled by Randomness by Nicholas Naseem Taleb, and I will spend time building up my knowledge before I try again in the future.

The silver lining here is, by fully giving up on trading, I have preserved my focus for my creative projects, and I am no longer at risk of losing half a day to responding to market conditions.

Chasing invoices

A long time ago, another freelancer gave me some great advice. She said, ‘I hate chasing up invoices, too. That’s why I ask for payment in full, up front.’ I took her advice, and for more than a decade, I didn’t work until somebody paid. This filtered out anyone who would treat me dishonestly. Having a big long page full of testimonials, and the willingness to always deliver and take the high ground, has made invoicing one of the easiest parts of my business, until this year.

In New Zealand, it’s common to wait until after work is completed to send an invoice, with a due date of the 20th of the following month. I was convinced use this system this year, and as a consequence, I had to spend hours chasing invoices to get them paid, in some cases a long time after the work was delivered. I hate this kind of work, because it keeps me from doing the valuable and creative things that I enjoy. Thankfully, I’ve been able to change my policies, and go back to what works best for me.

Part 3 – How many New Year’s Resolutions did I keep?

Resolution Kept

Some Success

Resolution Not Kept

Morning sun salutations after shower

Some success.

This was a helpful resolution. What I really wanted to accomplish (the lag measure) was doing my daily routine every day. What I could control (the lead measure) was doing 6 sun salutations (a series of yoga poses) after I get out of the shower. By keeping my resolution small, there were days where for whatever reason (laziness or busy-ness or travel) when I could not do my whole 1-hour morning routine. Doing just the yoga portion of it would either a) give me a bit of morning flexibility, or b) get me started enough to do the whole routine anyways.

One page journaling daily

Some success.

Looking back on my diary, I averaged 10 pages per month. Some months had more than 20 days of journaling, and some were as low as 5. I struggled with this routine the most. I feel a clarity when I journal every day, a clarity that will, I believe, become more important in an AI-powered future. The practices that give us clarity, that cannot be replicated by AI prompts, will help us to thrive. I don’t know if I can ever get 365-days-a-year daily journaling into my life, but returning to it regularly is good enough for me.

Gym & Sauna weekly

Success.

Even during my periods of illness and injury, I still went to take a sauna once a week. I longed to exercise, so I did some physical therapy during the winter months, and a handful of acupuncture treatments. I was very diligent about healing for a couple of months, and decided to reward myself with an upgraded gym membership on the Spring Equinox if my diligence led to me recovery. It did, and now I consistently go to the gym twice a week. It’s baked into my schedule now, and the endorphins I feel after my visits are enough to keep me going regularly. I don’t even need to resolve it anymore, this resolution has served its purpose – it ingrained the habit as part of my lifestyle.

Trade within guardrails

Fail.

Even while I was still trading, I wasn’t sticking to a system, I wasn’t journaling daily, and I was allowing myself to trade reactively out of emotion. I tried to limp along for a bit without good habits, and I was met with consistent losses. Getting out of the game is the best things for me to do right now.

Overall, a great year.

My habits are well in hand, and I’ve spent the last week of the year test-driving some of the habits I want to take into 2026. I may not keep them all (related post: Why Breaking New Year’s Resolutions Is Good For You). I’ll be making my New Year’s Resolutions tomorrow, and this year I’m going to focus on the simple habit at the beginning of an action, and resolve to do that small habit.