2025, by marathonman --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- January 2025, I'm starting the year on a train from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh to attend AGDQ. I'm listening to the self-titled album by Avenged Sevenfold, thinking about the lyrics to Almost Easy, because I had just gotten a text from a friend right after Christmas telling me to never contact them again, and I didn't know how to feel... Out of the last three years of my life, this was easily the most fulfilling out of all of them. 2023 felt like tearing a lot of things down, 2024 felt like picking up the pieces and trying to rebuild the mountain, and now in 2025 it feels like the mountain has finally taken shape. I'm not going to act like things are perfect because they never will be, but this by far the best collection of twelve calendar months I've had since 2022. It feels like this year has had multiple distinct phases and eras, so much so that it's hard to believe this all happened in 12 months. I feel like my mental health and perspective on my life and the people around me has changed dramatically and somehow still remained the same. It's been a very confusing year. So let's start with things I'm happy about: I FINALLY got Twitch Partner, on the afternoon of April 2nd. Anyone who has been watching my stream knows this is something I've wanted and talked about one day having basically since I started streaming regularly in April of 2020. It took a lot of patience, a lot of tearing down and rebuilding, a lot of trial and error, and honestly a lot of luck. I can sit here and talk all day about dreams and goals and whatnot, but for ANYONE to even care enough to give me the time of day is something I try not to take for granted. I think it's part of the reason why I'm still here doing this at 28 (almost 29). I feel very fortunate to be in this position, and can't imagine forgoing all of the hard work it took to get here. Whether you've been watching since I first started streaming 7 years ago, if you came in while I was editing for Xem, if you came in this year; thank you, from the bottom of my heart. I got to spend a lot of important moments with friends this year. AGDQ 2025 like I mentioned before, including commentating Xem's Max% run. Watching the Eagles win the Super Bowl (34-0 btw lmao), visiting Padge and Swift and finally getting to see the west coast, watching my best friend Andrew get married. Lots of moments in between. I stopped drinking alcohol entirely as of my birthday (April 5), although realistically my last serious drink ever was earlier in March, and I had been slowing down very heavily since August of 2024. Some of it was for health reasons, nothing serious or anything, just wanting to feel healthier in general. But most of the reasons for this decision were far more personal. Maybe one day I'll talk about why, but for now this is a closely kept secret. With the exception of (I think?) a few days in January, for the first time as an adult I have spent basically the entire year under 200 lbs. As a historically larger person my entire life, this still feels odd that this is just who I am now and we've finally shed that part of the past (literally and metaphorically). I'm enjoying the spoils of it now and have just been working on general body maintenance for most of the year. The biggest thing for me personally this year, was that same friend I mentioned earlier reaching out in the summer time. For the next few months, we spent a lot of time reconnecting, apologizing, and growing. It didn't feel real at first to be honest, I mean, "don't ever talk to me again" is a lot to hear from someone. It led to a lot of great memories and conversations and some of the most inspiring and fulfilling moments of my entire life. Some of the most genuinely happy I had been in years. It felt like a giant atlas-esque weight had been lifted from my shoulders. If you watched my stream at any point in the second half of the year, I think it was very apparent how much happier I was. Things I'm not happy about: Well let's get the obvious one out of the way, If you've watched my stream at all in the past week or so now, then you'll have heard me talking about it because I'm tired of bottling it in. That same friend, not 2 days after I last saw them and spent the day with them right before Christmas, once again disappeared with a trace. The closest thing to a "warning" that I got was them asking why their partner was banned in my stream. Maybe I blamed them for our past tension, truthfully this was something that was done at the start of the year and I had forgotten all about. Even after unbanned them, asking to talk about it, and eventually calling them begging not to leave, the last words they spoke to me (as of this writing) were to not contact them ever again, and admitting to "ignoring my shit". Even typing this now is a lot, it's just so bizarre to me how you can spend so much time with someone and repeatedly exclaim how happy you were to reconnect to do this just days later. It's something that broke my heart the first time, and has only left me more confused the second time. I miss this person dearly, and maybe I'm even more suspicious of emotional manipulation from their partner, who has never once tried to reach out to me (not even to yell at me). For a genuinely very positive and uplifting person, it has left me feeling very bitter and distraught these past two weeks. On a lighter note, for as much upward trajectory as the stream has had in the last year, I still question what exactly the future holds. I spent a lot of this year thinking about this. I will turn 29 this year, and while I feel like I've done a good job of fostering this stream into what its become, maybe I still feel like I'm taking a lot of things in my personal life for granted and question how long I can continue to live this life. It's maybe left me in a well of sour thoughts that have kept me from enjoying the year as much as maybe I could have. I'm very happy again with the growth the stream has made, but there are definitely a few people who have tried hard to get too close or too personal and it's led to a direct change in how I have to present myself on stream. Which sucks, as a very unapologetic person I don't ever want to feel like I'm hiding. On a similar note, I definitely at a few points this year felt like I was becoming a bit of a caricature. Going on stream in nothing but a white bathrobe and cat eye sunglasses, just as an example. As funny and entertaining as it is for me, maybe in 2026 I want to start feeling more like a regular human on stream again. I had a lot of ambitions for less stream-oriented projects like art and music and they all just kinda never fully came to fruition. I'm hoping we get to fix that for 2026. All and all, a very good year with huge highlights interwoven with just a slew of dark thoughts and bookended by very traumatic moments. It's January of 2026, I'm starting the year on a train from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh to attend AGDQ. I'm going to listen to the self-titled album by Avenged Sevenfold, think about the lyrics to Almost Easy, because I have just gotten a text from the same friend right after Christmas telling me to never contact them again, and I still don't know how to feel...