I don't know where I got it from, but at some point the question "do you prefer for things to be good or interesting" came to sit alongside "you gotta make your own fun" and "being 'in trouble' is a fake idea" on a very short list of phrases that resonate so precisely at my frequency that they've turned into principles. The other two are quotes from Bobcat Goldthwait on an episode of Space Ghost Coast to Coast and an Achewood panel, respectively, just in case you think I'm putting on any fancy philosophical airs here.

Now, hear me out: I do like things that are good. That's right, I'm brave enough to say it. Shout-out to all my fellow fans of things that are good; I see you out there. "Good" is frequently preferable to "interesting!" In fact, there are a great many things I would prefer to be less interesting. "The times," for example; living in less interesting times would be a nice change of pace. No, there's a reason it's a question and not the statement "interesting things are better than good things." "Good" has a lot of meanings. On the low end of the scale are "adequate," "acceptable," "fine." Where "good" means "just okay," I'm gonna choose "interesting" ten times out of ten, even if that ends up being a little more... fraught, let's say.

So, with that squarely in mind: what an interesting year.

Collecting a steady paycheck from somewhere would be inarguably good, but being independent remains interesting. This was not the least stressful year to be independent, as you either already know or could pretty easily guess. I managed to keep myself mostly booked with client work for the first half of the year — the hours are a little less and the rates are a little lower than previous years, but I'm getting by, knock-on-wood. I'm not saying I don't lose any sleep over it, but still, getting by, and that's all I'm ever after. I turn down more work than I probably should, on paper, but I've drawn some hard and fast lines around the kind of work I will not do. I won't lend my name to any organization or project with the kind of goals that I wouldn't want my name on; I won't use "generative AI" and I won't help propagate it, full stop. I'm unbelievably fortunate and immensely privileged to be able to draw those lines in the first place.

All my time for the latter half of the year was booked up by JavaScript for Everyone, which was — I don't mind saying — a little tense at times. Writing off several months' worth of could've-been-billable hours during a slower year in order to work on something that might end up paying the bills was not the least stressful call I've ever made. Writing the course itself, making goofy promo videos, firing off newsletters — seeing what resonates with people and what doesn't, constantly reloading the special webpage that determines whether the whole experiment was a success or failure and to what degree and how many months of my very real greater-Boston mortgage it would cover — all that sure as hell qualifies as interesting, but there was no way of knowing how it was going to shake out until after the cost had been well and truly sunk. All the not knowing made for a stressful couple of months and a very stressful couple of weeks, but ultimately: it went over pretty good! Not, like, retirement-good, but pretty damn good. It added up to less than spending that time hustling for client work might have — and I mean, who can say whether all those hours would've been booked up anyway — but it was enough, and again: that's all I ever want — I just want to be able to get by, while doing the kind of work I want to do. The course itself — and I say this without ego nor intended sales pitch — is really solid, thanks in no small part to Mike Pennisi's tech editing and all the support I got from the team at Piccalil.li. It looks great, it works great, the process of bringing it all together went as smoothly as Notion would allow, and I'm genuinely proud of the end result. I really do think people are going to get a lot out of it. I hope so, anyway.

It was also, in no uncertain terms, exhausting. We're a couple months out from launch and I'm still pretty burnt-out, if I'm being honest — I'm a little surprised I'm even writing this. But, y'know, that's sort of table stakes for a big writing project; not really a big mark in the "minus" column.

To tell you the truth: as with a great many other things, the big downside was being perceived. Lots of promotion, lots of posting, lots of linking; I do not love attention, which is why I generally tend to be pretty quiet out here on the information superhighway. In fact, I'm kinda dragging myself kicking-and-screaming through the post you're reading right now. The writing doesn't come as naturally without a focus beyond "look now upon me, and my whole deal, and my cool ideas" — woof does that ever trip me up. I don't want to be Seen and Known, I mostly just want to do push-ups in the basement and quietly tend to my bees. Great year for the bees, speaking of, quick aside — really strong hive this year.

So then, why all that; why this post? Well, I really liked doing this work and I want to do more of it. I'm not sure I made this explicit anywhere, but I really did write the whole thing out of spite. There's a real effort underway to devalue our industry — replace all us uppity designers and developers with chatbots that generate microwave-reheated websites and never say "no" to requests for carousels and tracking scripts. The more autocomplete code these tools churn out, the worse the web gets. The more uptake these tools see, the less room there is for junior developers to exist at all; the less junior developers there are, the less senior developers there ever will be. Our industry gets worse, those of us left in it get paid worse, the web gets worse, everything gets worse. I want us to get good out of spite; I want us to beat back the machine. Maybe teaching people can help with that.

Plus, y'know, I did enjoy the process of making it, stressful as things were. This is the most in-my-own-voice big thing I've ever written, and that felt good. I liked doing the behind-the-scenes newsletters way more than I thought I was going to — enough that I'm considering having a newsletter, though the lack of a central focus for it makes me a little hesitant. It's tough to get in gear without an externally-accounted schedule and a focused topic to square the writing against, even if I did immediately deviate from said focus almost every time.

But hey, speaking of newsletters and being extremely perceived: I started doing a little streaming this year, which was also more fun than I expected it to be. 20XX 2025 was the year of the Megamanathon, an eight-hour stream wherein we thwarted Doctor Wily's schemes across seven consecutive games and raised four thousand dollars for Trans Lifeline; that was a hell of a thing. Since I had worked out all the logistics for streaming that, I figured I might as well give it a shot while I was getting the course together — specifically, while writing the newsletters — and it was surprisingly helpful. Kept me focused(-ish) on the task at hand and kept me limber enough to not get bogged down in editing a single sentence to death for half an hour. They were pretty sparsely attended, but I'm not looking for any liking-and-subscribing and I don't want to grow any "follower counts" pretty much anywhere, just like, fundamentally. I'm still kinda looking for reasons to do it more, just for-funsies, but I'm not sure anyone out there needs to watch me run Flash Man's level over and over again for millisecond-level perfection. Right? Maybe? Right?

Long year, but not a boring one; I'm still hanging onto "interesting" and only occasionally with white knuckles. If I want things to stay that way, well, I might need to get square with being a little more visible. I've said as much elsewhere, but because of you I'm still here, still independent, still able to do the kind of work I want to be doing for clients, for the web, and for you — and privileged enough to be able to turn down work the kinds of work that I don't believe in. I owe that to all of you. So, thank you. Sincerely.

Oh, and the answer is Silksong, since I know you're wondering. Hollow Knight: Silksong, game of the year.