Looking Back at 2025

There is a saying that I have heard more than once in my life. I remember hearing it from my father, and later I heard it in some movies. The saying is, “There is a change in the winds.” I don’t know who said it first, but whoever did captured the feeling perfectly.

2025 went by way too fast. It ebbed and flowed, as life often does. Some days felt like they lasted forever, but the year as a whole slipped past almost unnoticed. When I stop and ask myself what was accomplished, what really stood out, or what makes the version of me right now better than the one who ended 2024, I hesitate.

Usually, people can mark a year by some big, undeniable accomplishment. I can’t point to anything that feels particularly monumental. I made some waves, though. I spent hundreds of hours researching One World Divided. I started the Instagram page Cllutz Photography. I worked with K-Cross Creative. I took on Film Luna County and Film Deming. I paid off my hearing aids.

I also did meaningful things with my family. I convinced my husband to watch the entire first season of The Black Dagger Brotherhood on Passionflix—something I’ve been reading and loving for over twenty years. We went to the corn maze. We carved pumpkins on Halloween. Nothing extraordinary. Everything important.

This year made me think differently about how we measure our lives. Life isn’t always defined by the moments that sweep you away or break you down—or even the ones that visibly build you up. Sometimes, the best parts of life are the subtle days. The quiet ones. The days that slowly stack on top of each other until your world feels steadier, richer, and more like home.

I think the real truth is that even when it feels like nothing significant happened, that doesn’t make the year a failure. I don’t know if everyone has that fleeting fight in their head every December—the thought that maybe the year was a complete bust—but I do. And every time, I have to argue back. Because the small things count. They add up. I paid off my hearing aids. That is not small. I started a photography brand because people asked me to. I shared a world I’ve loved for decades with the person I love most. Progress isn’t a leap to the top of a mountain. It’s a single uphill step that makes your thighs burn—and you take it anyway.

There was loss, too. I lost a friend to cancer and didn’t even know he was sick. I lost a mentor who had simply always been part of my life. Both losses were shocking, and they left behind a quiet kind of guilt—the feeling that I didn’t quite finish my story with either of them. That part still sits with me. And yet, life moves on, whether we are ready or not.

So no, this isn’t a review of 2025.

It’s an appreciation of a year well lived.