Rees D.

What I Thought (And Wrote) About This Year - 2025

Article • 995 Words • IndieWeb/Meta-blogging, 2025 • 12/24/2025

A reflection of what I wrote about and what that said about what was on my mind this year.

There are 1021 words in this article, and it will probably take you less than 6 minutes to read it.

This article was published 2025-12-24 00:00:00 -0500, which makes this post and me old when I published it.

It took an estimated to develop this article from conception to publishing.

Background

I made 80 posts this year! A veritable mix of lists, articles, and stubs that crossed a variety of different topics. As I counted, over 60 of them were pretty easily clumped into categories. While these categories do not encompass all the posts I made this year, I do think that it is an interesting and useful exercise to try to group together like articles to see what was on my mind the most this year.

I could have written a small program to generate links for all the articles, but I was too lazy, so if you see an article that is interesting you’ll just have to find it on the “All” Writing page.

I will list the topics in order to most to least posts.

Topics

Relationship Anarchy and Reimagining Romance: This is a project that I started this year after splitting up Romantic Abolitionism.

1. Romance Feels Good, Which Is Sometimes Bad (stub, 2025-02-14): [‘Love/Romance’]
2. Does your partner need to be your best friend? (stub, 2025-02-14): [‘Love/Romance’, ‘Partnership’, ‘Relationship Structures’]
3. Resisting the Automatic +1 (stub, 2025-02-17): [‘Dating’, ‘Relationship Structures’]
4. Everything is not romantic (stub, 2025-03-22): [‘Love/Romance’]
5. Can we reimagine romance? (article, 2025-03-22): [‘Love/Romance’]
6. Romance Is Prescriptive (stub, 2025-03-23): [‘Love/Romance’]
7. Re-imagining vs De-centering Romance (article, 2025-06-12): [‘Love/Romance’]
8. On Living Together (article, 2025-06-30): [‘Partnership’]
9. Mutual Support in Friendship (article, 2025-07-05): [‘Friendship’, ‘Loving Better’]
10. One Love (article, 2025-07-07): [‘Love/Romance’, ‘Philosophy’]
11. Commitment Without Escalation (article, 2025-08-05): [‘Relationship Structures’]
12. My Take on a Relationship Anarchy Worksheet (article, 2025-12-10): [‘Non-monogamy’]
13. The RA Smörgåsbord and the Worksheet-ification of Relationship Anarchy (stub, 2025-12-10): [‘Non-monogamy’]

Film: I started watching a lot more movies with my friends and I really got into it, I even became a Letterboxd Pro member!

1. Materialists (2025): Review (article, 2025-11-21): [‘Film’]
2. A Pigeon Sat On A Branch Reflecting On Existence (2014): Review (stub, 2025-11-22): [‘Film’]
3. Favorite Directors (list, 2025-11-25): [‘Film’]
4. By The Stream (2024): Review (stub, 2025-11-26): [‘Film’]
5. Warfare (2025): Review (stub, 2025-12-01): [‘Film’]
6. The Seventh Seal (1957): Review (stub, 2025-12-05): [‘Film’]
7. Caught By The Tides (2025): Review (stub, 2025-12-12): [‘Film’]
8. Marjorie Prime (2017): Review (article, 2025-12-12): [‘Film’]
9. Yi Yi (2000): Review (stub, 2025-12-13): [‘Film’]

Understanding Relationships: This is something that I am always trying to do both for myself and for others.

1. In Defense of Medium Friends (article, 2025-01-06): [‘Friendship’]
2. Why Do People Stay In Bad Relationships? (article, 2025-06-13): [‘Breakups’, ‘Love/Romance’]
3. Are shared goals required for a partnership? (article, 2025-06-27): [‘Partnership’]
4. What does growing together in a relationship mean? (article, 2025-08-09): [‘Relationships’]
5. How To (Important) Build Relationship Skills (article, 2025-11-12): [‘Loving Better’]
6. The Emotionality Gap in Relationships (article, 2025-11-18): [‘Relationships’]
7. Long-Term vs Daily Life Alignment (stub, 2025-12-11): [‘Compatibility’]

Non-monogamy: I entered my first non-monogamous relationship this year, so it was quite salient. I thought long and hard about non-monogamy beforehand, but other questions came up from friends and/or family and also daily practice.

1. Can you not have enough time for polyamory? (article, 2025-01-16): [‘Non-monogamy’]
2. Polywise: A Deeper Dive into Navigating Open Relationships by Jessica Fern & David Cooley (notes, 2025-01-21): [‘Books’, ‘Non-monogamy’]
3. Polyamory Acts on More Than Just Romance (article, 2025-05-26): [‘Non-monogamy’]
4. Is non-monogamous love shallower? (article, 2025-06-15): [‘Love/Romance’, ‘Non-monogamy’]
5. Thoughts on Polynormativity (stub, 2025-11-25): [‘Non-monogamy’]
6. Compatibility, Meeting Needs, and ENM (article, 2025-12-11): [‘Compatibility’, ‘Non-monogamy’]

Veganism: It has been almost two years since I started being Vegan at Home and my partner is vegan so it is definitely something that I like to think critically about.

1. The Effects of Different Reducetarian Splits (article, 2025-01-03): [‘Reducetarian’, ‘Veganism’]
2. Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer (notes, 2025-01-11): [‘Books’, ‘Veganism’]
3. Gym Rats Are The Perfect Reducetarian Target (article, 2025-01-17): [‘Personal Fitness’, ‘Reducetarian’]
4. Vegan, Nut-Free, High-Protein Packaged Snacks (list, 2025-06-18): [‘Food/Beverage’, ‘Veganism’]
5. Anabolic Plant-Based Protein (list, 2025-06-19): [‘Food/Beverage’, ‘Veganism’]
6. How much more expensive is eating plant-based? (stub, 2025-10-27): [‘Veganism’]

Philosophy of Flirting, Play, and Humor: The idea of flirting has always captivated me, and in trying to reason about it, I stumbled into the concept of play, and back to an old field of mine, humor.

1. Towards a Definition of Flirting (stub, 2025-02-11): [‘Dating’, ‘Love/Romance’]
2. What is play? (stub, 2025-08-24): [‘Philosophy’]
3. Teasing, Play, and Flirtation (article, 2025-10-08): [‘Dating’, ‘Philosophy’]
4. Comedic Sparring (stub, 2025-11-25): [‘Communicating Better’, ‘Humor’]
5. Riffing is Human Nature (article, 2025-11-26): [‘Humor’]

Philosophy more broadly: I am never not thinking about philosophy, but I didn’t realize I hadn’t been writing that much about it. However, in some ways, all my writing is philosophical.

1. Teaching Children Ethics (stub, 2025-02-23): [‘Education’, ‘Philosophy’]
2. Neuroscience, Freewill, and Moral Responsibility (notes, 2025-02-28): [‘Cognitive Science’, ‘Philosophy’]
3. Asexuality and Sexual Desire/Pleasure (article, 2025-06-14): [‘Philosophy’]
4. Philosophical Concepts Mentioned in R.F. Kuang’s Katabasis (list, 2025-09-01): [‘Books’, ‘Philosophy’]

AI: This is such a topical subject and I actually don’t like it as much as some of my SWE or philosophical counterparts, but I do think that there is some interesting matter.

1. The Moral Objectionability of LLMs (stub, 2025-03-07): [‘Artificial Intelligence’, ‘Philosophy’]
2. Ghibli-fication and AI “Art” (stub, 2025-03-30): [‘Artificial Intelligence’]
3. AI Usage Acceptability Spectrum (article, 2025-11-19): [‘Artificial Intelligence’]
4. Biomimicry and AI (notes, 2025-10-27): [‘Artificial Intelligence’]

Socialization and Gender: After I read The Will to Change by bell hooks, I started to really think about gender and socialization more.

1. Hermeneutic Labor (notes, 2025-04-11): [‘Feminism’, ‘Philosophy’, ‘Sociology’]
2. Mechanisms of Socialization (notes, 2025-04-08): [‘Psychology’]
3. On Training Men To Be Boyfriends (article, 2025-06-15): [‘Relationships’]

Lifting: August of this year marked one year of lifting for me, and I wanted to capture my thinking and results to share with other people.

1. My Beginner Lifting Journey (article, 2025-01-24): [‘Personal Fitness’]
2. Finding Lifting Exercises That Are Right For Me (article, 2025-05-08): [‘Personal Fitness’]
3. Visualizing Lifting Progression (article, 2025-10-29): [‘Personal Fitness’]

Retrospectives: I have always loved writing reflection pieces where I synthesize information.

1. Celebrating 100 Articles and Essays (article, 2025-01-09): [‘IndieWeb/Meta-blogging’]
2. My Year Wrapped - 2025 (article, 2025-12-16): [‘Living Better’]
3. A Year of Home Updates 2025 (stub, 2025-12-16): [‘Interior Design’]

IndieWeb/Meta-blogging: I haven’t been as involved in IndieWeb stuff this year, but maybe next year!

1. A Blog Is Freedom (article, 2025-01-19): [‘IndieWeb/Meta-blogging’]
2. Don’t Break Links (article, 2025-10-01): [‘IndieWeb/Meta-blogging’, ‘Jekyll’]