Zach's Ode To 2025

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Another year has flown by, and quite the year it has been.

This is the first one in a while without major trips, but has seen continuous progress being made personally, professionally, and in terms of the blog; and I can't believe it's about to end. I feel like it was just yesterday that I composed the Ode to 2024.

So, enough pre-remiscening, we shall carry on.

This year, we celebrated two major milestones for the blog. Both of which occurred on the same day (which originally wasn't supposed to happen but that’s life!).

The latter is especially significant, as it wasn't expected originally that we were going to make it this far. When ZachsThoughts popped into existence, it was presumed to be a COVID hobby project, one that would inevitable fade into insignificance . But it hadn't. We have endured and have passed many expectations.

Between January 1 and December 26, 2025 (including this one), there had been 49 blog posts published. 29 of them had been General Commentary posts and 20 had been Reviews. This is the first year where General Commentary surpassed Reviews, and for two crucial reasons:

Let me expand the second point: When I originally created the blog, the goal was it to be about whatever I wanted, and while reviews served that purpose for a while, I did and do not want to write reviews just for the sake of it. While I have seen some new shows and been to a few places, they did not warrant enough emotion at the time for me to write it. So I didn't.

Something that I mention was the desire to write "Remastered" posts last year. However, upon further analysis and review, I decided not to proceed as the posts were all fine and I had nothing further to edit or say on what was in the original posts. So they will stay as they are. However, to make a distinction with the older posts, there has been a new "Legacy" category tag added to all posts published before June 15, 2022.

Moving away from the editorial side, this was the first year that ZachsThoughts fully used Beehiiv as its email subscription service, and it has definitely been trial-and-error on not only the email delivery system, but also the design template and landing webpage, which, while customizable, are a hassle to use at times. This is also complicated by Beehiiv's attempts to be an all-in-one platform, that are way too much for what I need, an easy email platform to send from a custom domain.

While I don't necessarily agree with everything Beehiiv is doing, I still find it worthwhile to use for those looking for a basic newsletter system. I have an affiliate link if you're interested.

On the technical side: ZachsThoughts was updated to the Divi 5 Beta in October, and it has been a whirlwind to get everything up to speed. Many pages were reconstructed and bug fixes were deployed more frequently than they had in the past. There may be a few things scattered around, but nothing too concerning.

Now, there's also promotion for us to discuss. If there is one thing that we cannot manage to do, it is to successfully promote and advertise the blog. Due to my blatant refusal to artifically inflate the blog posts with certain keywords or buy advertisements, not having a certain niche, or posting/commenting on 10,000 different posts/accounts, it is near-impossible to truly get anywhere. However, we will continue the march onwards, and the mantra of writing for fun, not for metrics.

Finally, I'm going to use this last section to apologize for the slow-down in new blog posts. Finals season fatigue is real and I had little energy or creativity to write a new post. I hope this doesn't happen again, but I can't guarantee it.

The blog is only the tip of the iceberg on what had been my life. I was able to complete my first full academic year in higher education and am now half-way done with the second one.

Not only with classes have I been thriving, but also professionally. In addition to my second year at a web design internship in Massachusetts, I have also been involved in the student-run public relations firm on campus. Originally, I was contracted in April to help lead the development efforts in the firm's new website. Which meant leading a team of three individuals. However, I did such an amazing job (somehow) that I was promoted to Assistant Director, where I am now not only leading the Web Team, but also launching the Editorial Team where firm members will be copywriting blog posts and press releases on behalf of the Firm.

So that happened.

In addition, this year I have really started putting it on myself to start reading more books than I had previously. At the time of this post, I am reading a biography of Henry David Thoreau and will hopefully begin reading James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. I am hoping that this may allow for creative juices to flow easier and just overall improve my quality of life away from constant technology.

Currently, I am not anticipating any changes with our release strategy. Self-hosted WordPress + Beehiiv is the best solution that I have, and it's not worth it for me to sign up for one more account.

With content: I want to start writing more in-depth mini-research posts that dive into a specific topic. Think of these like "General Longform" but much longer. I want ZachsThoughts to become a more refined editorial hub and become more formal. I have a few ideas on the back-burner, and am looking forward to where they may go.

I have also been in the preliminary stages of a fictional project codenamed Project Woodstock. All I will say is that it is on the clashing of small-town America with cosmopolitan society.

But before all of that, the first post of the new year will be a review of South Florida (i.e. Miami Beach) coming on January 4, 2026!

Other posts (hopefully) arriving in Quarter 1 of 2026 include:

Finally, I'm running the semi-rare Reader Survey to directly gauge the audience and see what people are interested in and how I can improve the site. You can view it at ZachsThoughts.com/form!

Thank you for reading this post and supporting ZachsThoughts. Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!

PS. The Ode To 2025 was released via email early as a thank you for being a subscriber. I really appreciate you willing to put me in your inbox. The “Read Online” link is technically broken but will begin working upon the official release of the post on December 26 at 4PM ET

PPS. As a thank you for being a subscriber, enjoy some curated screenshots of behind-the-scenes on what makes this whole operation tick.

Thank you again for your continued support and patronage!