2025 - A year of successful Failures & Beginnings

2025 has turned out to be among the most consequential—and best—years of my life. When looking back at it now, as it approaches its end, I see it as the year that I—at last—set aside the ambiguity of my writing aspirations, and finally did the damn thing. I wrote a book, A Vantage of Darkness, without knowing what the hell I was doing. And let me tell you without sarcasm, what a joy it is do things in such a way—to learn by failing.

I’m sure there’s a more elegant term for such a process, but it was a truly a bumbling adventure worth having. I got the words down, came to grasp the true depth of my ignorance when I got it edited, learned even more of what I didn’t know when I went to query the book to editors, then again when I went to self-publish the story. What a ride. But despite all the fumbling, I look back at it now and consider the process nothing but a success, one resulting in a talisman of my efforts in the form of the book, something I consider to be amongst my proudest accomplishments of my life.

And yet, from the outset, I knew that A Vantage of Darkness had never, not once, been the goal of it all. The goal was to make writing—the process and endeavor of overcoming my inhibitions and putting words onto paper—the true aspiration; to do it consistently and without—too much—reservation. As such, I have gone about embracing that perspective and have written another novel, this one a western, inspired by Midnight Mass, Lonesome Dove, and a medieval theocratic rebellion! I can’t want to share more. I will soon enough.

But as I approach my final revisions of the new manuscript and begin the querying process once more, I eagerly look forward to approaching the process again. As to what this one might be about, I haven’t an earthly idea. What a beautiful thing, to ponder without consequence.

But despite all that 2025 has brought me with regard to my writing, something further has come about this year, something that makes the book and every word in the English language seem inconsequential by comparison. 2025 will, more than anything, be me known in my approaching retrospect, as the year in which I found out that I would be a father.

And to such an effect, my excitement cannot yet be fully expressed, for I am still giddily soaking in its comprehension.