Looking Back at 2025: A Year of Loss, Resolve, and Reckoning
I admit I’m a bit late with this reflection on 2025. It’s been a busy beginning of the new year. But this weekend I’ll be driving to Kings Mountain to go through some things at my Mom’s house. It was home for about 61 years. This is going to be a tough few days, but it has to be done.
As I leave, I’ll try not to say, “farewell.” I’ll offer a benediction.
A benediction is different. It’s a blessing spoken at the close of something meaningful. It doesn’t deny the ending, but it dignifies it. It says, “This mattered. And I release it with gratitude.” A benediction doesn’t cling. It sends. It honors what was and then points forward.
I’m not going back to that house as a boy leaving home for the first time. I’m going back as a man who was formed there. The land, the rooms, the memories—they did their work. A farewell would be trying to hold onto what cannot be held. A benediction is acknowledging: this place helped make me, and now I carry it within me.
I suspect it resonates because I am at an age and stage where I am closing multiple chapters. Career shifts. My mother’s passing. Even the subtle shift in how I think about “home.” A farewell can feel destabilizing. A benediction feels grounded. It assumes continuity of self.
There’s also something very Wesleyan about it, whether you consciously feel that or not. Benedictions are spoken at the end of worship, not because God is leaving, but because the people are being sent into the world. The blessing is fuel for what comes next.
I’ve always held in memory a conversation I once had with my best and life-long friend, Rick McDaniel. His parents and grandparents had died. He lived in Asheville, and his sister lives in Charlotte. He said, “I don’t have any reason to go back to Kings Mountain anymore, and that makes me sad.” I’ve always known that I’d likely have that same experience. Now I have, and it makes me sad also.
So maybe this trip isn’t about saying goodbye to Kings Mountain. Maybe it’s about standing in it one last time and saying,
“Thank you. You did your work. I’m going on.”
Last year, I wrote about progress. This year I write about endurance.
The numbers still matter because they tell part of the story. I crossed the 200-pound total weight-loss mark since September 2023. The morning walks continued. The steps accumulated. The discipline held. That matters. At 66, I am in better physical condition than I was at 46. That is not small. It is a quiet miracle built from thousands of ordinary mornings.
But 2025 was less about momentum and more about maintenance. Less about achievement and more about staying steady when the ground shifted.
And it shifted.
In September, my mother died at 91. I was there at the end. I wrote in 2024 how grateful I was that she was still living at home and that our visits had become more regular and more precious. I did not know how soon those visits would become a memory.
Grief does not come in one clean wave. It arrives in fragments. The reflex to call. The impulse to share a small story. The sudden memory of her voice in the kitchen. It is both ache and gratitude at once. She lived a long life. She loved fiercely. She served faithfully. But even a long goodbye does not make the quiet house feel less quiet.
And yet, I would not trade the privilege of being there at the end. That, too, was a gift.
Professionally, 2025 carried its own reckoning. The job I poured myself into ended with a layoff in July. No drama. No scandal. Just the quiet corporate calculus of margins and contracts and restructuring. After more than three decades in Records and Information Management, including major federal programs and digital transformation work, I found myself on the other side of the table. At 66.
That sentence lands heavier than I would like.
I am not naïve. I understand the market. I understand age bias, even when no one names it. I also understand my value. The two do not always align in the hiring ecosystem.
There were applications. Interviews. LinkedIn messages. Customized resumes. Moments of hope. Moments of silence. A few billable consulting hours here and there. Enough to remind me that I still have something to offer. Not enough to call it stability.
And in the background, the calendar ticks toward full Social Security retirement age.
This is not the retirement I once imagined. I am not done. I do not feel done. But I am closer to that threshold than ever before, and 2025 forced me to look at it without flinching.
On the civic front, the year was no less intense. Florida politics continued its sharp turn toward cruelty dressed as governance. National politics deepened into something that feels less like disagreement and more like fracture. The return of Donald Trump to power left me disappointed but no longer shocked. The outrage machine keeps humming. The policies toward immigrants, LGBTQ people, and public education remain relentless.
And yet, 2025 was also a year of action.
The March event at Hyde Park United Methodist Church was packed. People showed up. They leaned in. They wanted tools, not just outrage. “Finding Your Voice” followed. Training. Engagement. Ripples.
In a year when so much felt unstable, the local work felt real. Concrete. Human. It reminded me that even when national politics feels like a tidal wave, local action is still possible. And necessary.
On the writing front, something deeper took root.
The Stoicism essays moved from curiosity to structure. What began as an accidental tug—memento mori in a text exchange—became a disciplined practice. Morning reflection. Evening review. Essays on justice, temperance, grief, and civic duty. The practices were no longer theoretical. They were survival tools.
I did not choose Stoicism because life was easy. I chose it because life was not.
The idea that we control our judgments, not external events, stopped being philosophy and became an operating procedure. When you are sitting beside your dying mother, you cannot control the outcome. When a layoff arrives, you cannot reverse the decision. But you can choose your posture. Your response. Your integrity.
That is not denial. It is discipline.
So what was 2025?
It was a year of subtraction.
- My mother.
- My job.
- Certain illusions about stability.
But it was also a year of clarification.
- I am healthier than I have ever been.
- I am more disciplined in my thinking.
- I am more certain of my values.
- I am less interested in chasing approval and more interested in alignment.
And that brings me to 2026.
If 2025 was the year of endurance, 2026 must be the year of intention.
A Charter to myself, drafted earlier, is not aspirational fluff. It is operational guidance.
First, health remains non-negotiable. The weight stays off. The walks continue. Strength training deepens. If medication reduction is possible, that would be wonderful. If not, discipline remains. The body I live in now is a gift I fought for. I will not squander it.
Second, financial clarity replaces financial anxiety. I need a plan that is grounded, not wishful. Whether that means continued consulting, part-time engagement, a targeted full-time role, or a phased glide path into retirement, the decision will be deliberate. Not reactive. No more drifting into next steps. This stage of life requires strategy.
Third, writing becomes central rather than peripheral. The Stoicism Journey is no longer a side project. It is a body of work. It has coherence. It has a voice. It may become a book. At the very least, it becomes a disciplined practice of thought. If professional reinvention is part of my future, it may well run through writing and teaching rather than traditional corporate hierarchy.
Fourth, civic engagement continues, but with sustainability in mind. I cannot save the republic single-handedly. No one can. The work must be steady, not frantic. Strategic, not merely reactive. Local impact over performative outrage. A quote I’ve adopted as a kind of motto from Jana Stanfield says it best:
“I can’t do all the good world needs, but the world needs all the good I can do.”
There is one more truth I must name.
Turning 66 and facing a layoff in the same year can quietly bruise the ego. There is a temptation to measure worth by title or salary. To wonder if the most productive chapters are behind me. I reject that narrative.
But rejecting it requires action. It requires creating, contributing, and engaging, not merely reminiscing. The next chapter will not look like the last 35 years. It cannot. But it can be purposeful.
In 2024, I wrote, “Let’s see where the road leads next.”
In 2025, I learned that sometimes the road narrows. Sometimes it climbs. Sometimes it takes away more than it gives.
In 2026, I intend to walk it anyway.
- Steady.
- Clear-eyed.
- Grateful.
- And unafraid of what I cannot control.
Here’s to 2025—a year that stripped away more than it added.
Here’s to 2026—a year of deliberate living.
Let’s begin.
