What Did I Learn in 2025?
Whilst 2025 was a year of significant change personally and professionally, I arrived at Christmas feeling content and joyous about my life.
I spent most of 2025 writing about ten qualities of a good human. Being present. Listening deeply. Living truthfully. Taking responsibility. Embracing change. Each month, another quality explored, another article researched and crafted.
Leaving Full-Time Work Behind
These became an interesting companion to changes in my life. In May, I finished full-time work with the company I co-founded in 2014, eleven years prior. So much of my identity is tied up with that business; it’s what I am known for, and it’s given me a large contact book of people around Australia and the world. It’s given me opportunities to travel - Canada, UK, Singapore, Thailand and all corners of Australia.
But it was time to move on. I was holding on to a great deal of stress, internalising it in a way that was unhealthy. Some days felt like Groundhog Day, the same dramas and challenges emerging every year.
I used my newfound freedom to travel. I holidayed in Bali twice, visited family in Canberra and on the Gold Coast, and spent nearly three weeks in England and Berlin, with time to see family, take in new sights, meet new people, and have new experiences. I loved Berlin; it’s my kind of town, and I’d love the chance to go back someday.
Along the way, I added to my tattoo collection and let my hair grow long enough for a messy ponytail. I struggled with insomnia, lying in bed with my mind churning at 3 am. I watched friends go through divorces and grief. Failed to pick up the phone when I should have. Said yes to things I meant to decline. Declined things I wish I’d said yes to. Because life is messy.
I had changes at home as well: my 25-year-old son moved out mid-year, so I’m alone at home every other week (I care for my youngest daughter in alternating weeks). It’s a weird feeling in the house when you are the only one living there. I have never really lived by myself. I’ve shared houses, been in long-term relationships, so there’s always been another human presence. Today I have weeks when it’s just me. I’m still settling into that after nearly six months.
I’ve had health challenges in 2025 - the main one of which is developing osteo arthritis in my right shoulder, a consequence, it seems, of swimming loads of laps multiple days a week. The pain in my shoulder keeps me from swimming, and it’s eroding my fitness. In this new year, I’m trying to be more diligent about finding ways to move that don’t exacerbate it. At some stage in 2026, my number will come up for a surgery date, and that will be a whole new trial, my arm in a sling for six weeks, then a long period of physio and recovery.
One positive of not working full-time is that I’ve been able to devote proper time to Alone Rangers and my writing. I’m proud to have consistently published articles throughout 2025, and I’ve been thrilled and energised by the feedback and anecdotes from readers. I’ll talk about what’s coming in 2026 in next week’s article, but be assured you will see some exciting changes and new initiatives I’ve been researching and planning for the last couple of months - a big thank you to my friends and family who have been roadtesting a prototype of something new that will launch very soon!
I’ve also consistently volunteered at several large events and festivals. I suspect some people might consider these not particularly mainstream, but my participation has opened doors to remarkable communities, often with people who sometimes feel marginalised or ‘alternative’. But as I’ve drawn closer to them, I’ve found a depth of creativity, compassion and love that many others would be well to emulate.
The Gap Between Writing and Living
I constantly feel a particular kind of impostor syndrome when writing about how to be a good human, even though, on the surface, I have zero qualifications beyond an ego big enough to believe I have a voice and an opinion.
Who was I to write about being present when I’d spent a night mentally rehearsing a difficult work conversation? How could I explore authentic connection if I let days pass without responding to someone who had messaged me?
The gap between the qualities I was writing about and my ability to consistently embody them felt enormous. Some days, uncomfortably so.
But over the year and through the writing process, something shifted. Not in my ability to perfectly practise these qualities - that remained inconsistent even with my best intent at play. What shifted was my understanding of what the work actually is.
The Work Is in the Gap
So what did I learn in 2025?
The work isn’t becoming someone who has mastered presence, listening, truthfulness, and all the rest. The work is in the gap itself. In noticing when you’ve drifted away from presence and choosing to return. In catching yourself interrupting someone mid-sentence and actually stopping. In recognising that you’ve been performing authenticity rather than living it.
Small Moments, Simply Recorded
No amount of journaling will transform your life in thirty days. I firmly believe that the key is ‘small moments, simply recorded’: incremental steps that recognise the journey is everything, and that we continue to nurture and practice the ten qualities throughout our lives.
There are simple, actionable small practices that build lifelong habits, not overnight transformations, and guide us through emotional work that is grounded, honest, and connected to everyday life.
I finished a long process of shifting my mindset from physical objects and places to making people the centre of my life, and I believe I finally began to offer the world a version of myself that is open, honest, and as authentic as I can be. As a consequence, my relationships and connections with the people close to me continued to evolve in the most wonderful and fulfilling ways.
Whilst 2025 was a year of significant change personally and professionally, I arrived at Christmas feeling content and joyous about my life. I still have worries - financially, I am much worse off now that I am not in full-time work - but there is much to be excited about in 2026, building on my 2025 journey.