A while back, Fin grabbed a copy of “The Artists Way” - a self-help book for “blocked creatives”. We’ve both looked at it a couple times, but over the last few months, I decided to actually make an honest go of working the program. The course itself is essentially a reframed “12-step” program for people “blocked” in their creative process. Despite the billing as creativity rehab, the course really shades heavily into the mental health world. After finishing, one of the last “tasks” is to share the book / experience. So, in keeping with that, I’m dropping my review here. TL;DR - I enjoyed it but with some caveats.

In April / May 2006, I moved across the country to Kansas City. Sadly, the exact date is lost to time. The best record I have is a handful of emails oriented around my job search and the birth of my niece. I’ve never really treated the anniversary as a special occasion. While I have given little thought to it for many years, this year feels different. More concrete and somehow more important. Realizing it’s 20 years since leaving my hometown gives me a new sense of urgency in life. Funny this all happens to land with a self-imposed deadline to evaluate my goals for the year.

Despite my best intentions for 2025, most of my goals for the year weren’t really executed upon. This year, my work-life balance has been a bit out of whack. Large work projects distract from things that matter at home and make it difficult to concentrate on personal projects with little energy left over for hobbies. Adding in the continual flood of near-existential crisis in about every aspect of life right now – and progress on any sort of “goal” metric slows down. I found a local club to engage with and have largely switched back to Linux for day-to-day computing. Those are huge wins, but many of the other 2025 goals were partially met at best.