2025: Closing Chapters
📝 Journal 5: Wrapping up 2025, writing reflections & hobby recap.
Hello again, folks! It’s been a while… isn’t it? :)
I hope you’re doing well, my fellow readers & hobbyists. In this journal entry, I want to share a few reflections from this past year, focusing on my writing journey, hobby recap & life experiences.
Just to be clear: I’m not a writer by profession (also not an internet-famous person). I’m just a regular person doing this as a hobby. I don’t earn commission from this aside from occasional exchange or collaborations.
Reflections on My Writing & Life Experience.
In 2025, my writing took on a new shape.
What started as casual hobby updates has grown into a more thoughtful longform storytelling that lets me pause, reflect & connect with both my interests & my own thoughts.
Through life’s up & downs, my creative pursuits became the anchor of solace & clarity. They’ve subtly invited readers not just to follow my interests, but to slow down, process own experiences & walk alongside me through deeper layers of self-discovery & more intentional creativity.
From there, my thoughts shifted outward toward the digital world. I reflected on how we curate ourselves online & how we present our lives through screens, resulting in both critiques & confessions.
In the midst of crossroad chapters, I drew strength from the solitary moments of my hobbies. I tried sketching out my hobby list for the year, noticing small discoveries along the way, & reminding myself that clarity often arrives in fragments rather than in grand resolutions.
Later on, I found myself caught between multiple life paths, weighing options & priorities without knowing which ones worth committing to. I tried not to treat indecision as failure, instead reframing it as catching what feels meaningful & releasing what no longer fits. I searched for balance within the uncertainties.
There was a reflective pause, trusting & safeguarding what truly matters even when the direction wasn’t entirely clear. It felt like moving gracefully with the current rather than against it. There was a break from the urgency of decision-making; a calm moment of savoring the experience of being, rather than focusing on the destination. Over time, this grew into a quiet acceptance.
Then came a sudden pivot in my personal narratives, guided not by a fixed plan but by my own intuitions. It lingered between where I hoped to be & where I stood in that present moment.
Towards the final, I tied up loose ends & felt the bittersweet weight of endings. It became a bridge between phases, carrying moments of gratitude while preparing both my heart & mind for the chapters ahead~
Recaps on My Hobbies.
Note: This section may be a bit repetitive if you’ve seen my previous posts. I’ve unpublished a few online & merged some bits here. Subscribers, you’ll still get to keep all my original posts. Thanks for bearing with me :)
Just this year alone, I’ve written about 70,000+ words, sharing my thoughts across Substack, Goodreads, Instagram story highlights & grid posts. That is essentially a full-length manuscript. A whole book. A novel.
When I almost thought I hadn’t made it, the stubborn part of me kept going. It’s wild to think about it now, but I had actually achieved the wish of writing more without even realizing it until I sat here reflecting.
This year, I’d say my hobby focus gravitated more towards space & science fiction. I’m glad I rediscovered my love for sci-fi genre, something that rarely happened before this.
List of my 2025 hobby recaps.
🎮📚 Games & Books:
Self-studied on lore & classic RPGs.
Received key to Avowed & tested parts of Pillars of Eternity. Also part of alpha-beta tester for D&D Project Sigil & Cosmere RPG.
Immersed into epic scale of sci-fi worldbuilding from EXODUS.
Expanded my new Witcher cave. Wrote some early lore & Witcher classics.
Received my backer projects: Witcher: Path of Destiny, Cosmere RPG & The Expanse: A Little Death.
Completed Telltale: The Expanse game.
Full chronological revisit of Mass Effect: Andromeda books & game. Wrote about it on my IG story highlights.
Partly revisit Outer Worlds on Switch.
Read some random books this year, full list on my Goodreads.
📝 Write-Ups:
Started this Journal series! 🎉
My 2025 Hobby List & all the memories.
Books That Made Me post, while reflecting on my younger-self.
Full The Expanse Lore Revisit post, with chronological checklist.
Twin posts of space & sci-fi: Echoes Through Space & Into The Unknown.
👾 Other Stuff:
My hobby-cave 5th Birthday on August.
Random: self-studied Polish language & tried extreme art coloring.
Finished my first Star Wars: Podrace Challenge. Built some Lego spaceships.
Star Wars: Andor S2 & The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered dropped on the same day. Masterpiece & nostalgia. I immersed in both.
Alexander Freed replied to my SWTOR post. Then, Bartosz Sztybor messaged on my Witcher collection & Cyberpunk stuff. Two creatives that I admired.
Rewatched Blade Runner(s), Howl’s Moving Castle, Kimi No Nawa.
Became part of VGHF members, shared some archived digital magazines.
Wrapping Up My 2025.
2025 has been a year of uncertainty, change & acceptance for me. I’ve tried to acknowledge the adversities while embracing the potential for growth, mindfulness & intentionality.
After five years of sharing this hobby stuff, I now need to pause & reflect on my original intentions. When I first started this on my Instagram, I just wanted to keep it simple, as my own online nerd diary, which I found quite useful whenever I need to refer back to my older posts or link them to anyone who asked about certain topics.
Along that journey however, I didn’t anticipate all sorts of nerds to get randomly pulled into my little hobby cave, which honestly feels like another ‘mission accomplished’ moment in uniting the nerds (as mentioned on my About Me page). I also didn’t expect to pull a diverse pool of readers, to the point where Google now constantly sending me statistic reports & indexing my pages.
Even as the silent audience grew from all corners of the internet, I still want to do this for myself, not because of the numbers.
I’ve been wrestling with how Instagram & Substack platforms have changed over the years, drifting further from what they were originally intended for. I could go on at length about all of this, but I don’t want to cram everything into this post.
Honestly, I can just enjoy my hobbies offline, without needing to turn everything into content. I’ve never needed validation & not everything has to be posted, explained or proven. There’s a quiet freedom in keeping some things just for myself, & that reminder brought me a real sense of ease.
In the midst of all that, my real life took a sudden leap of faith & I’ve been reflecting on many areas as I think about what comes next.
Briefly, I’m re-evaluating my purpose, balancing my focus & deciding whether I want to continue doing this in the years ahead. As I write this, I can see myself becoming much less visible on both platforms. Time will tell.
Okay folks, I’m closing this entry with one of my favorite bands, She’s Green, that I discovered this year. I love all their tracks. After sharing my favorite song Figurines in my previous journal, Graze was another one I played on repeat.
Thank you for reading. 💜🕊️ ~figu.