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The year of complete transformation
My 2024 theme of “swagger” pushed me out of my comfort zone, so for 2025 I chose the theme Hold Your Own – inspired by Kae Tempest’s eponymous poem, which feels like a sacred text to me. Hold Your Own became my mantra and often helped me make decisions, so it passed my litmus test for a useful annual theme.
In some ways, this was a really quiet year. In others, there was a lot of upheaval. That upheaval was all about the basics: where we live, what pets we keep, who we spend time with, who we work with / for, how I view myself.
It was a big reshuffling, like a Jenga tower that was rebuilding itself while keeping its form. In some ways I feel like I made zero progress. In others, I feel like I'm completely transformed. I am the same person as last year, I am a completely different person than last year. I have grown, I have stayed true to myself. Maybe that's the true meaning of Hold Your Own: Finding out what's truly of myself, and what's of others.
With so much change and patience and letting go, I enjoyed things from the past: books, TV series I either already knew or that were set in the past. I read all of David Lodge's fiction – he passed away at the start of 2025 – and realised that some things I used to enjoy are less enjoyable to me now. Only a small handful of his books still resonate with me. One of them is Small World, which inspired me to think of a German parlour game (more at the end of this update).
So, here’s my list of 2025 favourites.
Best of 2025
Music
Kae Tempest, Self-Titled.
I listened to Kae Tempest more than to any other artist last year. I admire his intentional living, his vulnerability and immense power of expression. When I feel discouraged or down, Kae is sure to have some sort of secular sermon and a beat that lift me up. Two tracks for you to get started:
Quotes
Love said: If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. But if you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.
Power comes from relaxation. Tension decreases power.
We work in the dark — we do what we can — we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our doubt. The rest is the madness of art.
Software & apps
2025 has shown me how much energy I get out of playing with new software. There was at least one new app in each quarter. Here are my favourites:
Q1: Capacities – a made-in-Germany note-making tool that won me over from Obsidian. It’s where I make sense of stuff and turn ideas into action.
Q2: Dia browser – the sequel to Arc by The Browser Company of New York, and now owned by Atlassian. It's an AI browser with skills that make my work life so much more efficient.
Q3: Endel – another German app, another AI based app. This one generates soundscapes to help me focus, exercise, relax, fall asleep, manage my seasonal affective disorder. Nature soundscapes often put me on edge because they're so noisy, unpredictable and call up undesirable associations (like, fire! Who can relax when it sounds like the house is on fire?). With Endel, I can keep my tinnitus in check and minimise distractions.
Q4: Tiimo – a Danish productivity app that won Apple’s iPhone App of the Year at the App Store Awards. I remember trying the app years ago and not really resonating with it, but we've both come a long way! It's made my planning more realistic and satisfying, and I've achieved a better work-life balance using it.
Top Takeaways
I am a city person
Moving to Amsterdam was everything last year. I love the smaller space, the people outside, the ability to get things done easily and not having to drive. Wish I could have made more use of this – I was so busy with work that I could not go out as much – but it's a good start.
From Scratch is about website and culture strategy
The best outcome from spending 5 months in Joanna Wiebe’s Copy School Professional is that we revisited our positioning and now have a much better connection between Holger's and my areas of work. It seems so logical now that I know what it is, but the search for this clarity was painful and much overdue.
Learning to respect the sensitivity and intensity of my brain
Last year I had a revelation about how I’m wired. I’m rebuilding around clearer boundaries, structured work, and environments that let my intensity be an asset, not a liability. The result:
I need to slow down.
January started with a crisis that hung over the rest of the year like a shadow that I was trying to outrun. Like a dark cloud over my head, with me running out underneath it, trying to get ahead of it, trying to be faster than it so it can't overtake me. I ran fast and forgot fast: I was in burnout till May, and instead of enjoying life, I immediately dove into rebuilding everything. Every month after May was intense. So, I was fast enough to come out of burnout – but not slow enough to complete the necessary rebuild.
For years, I've been saying this: All roads lead to slowness. But I didn't really live that way. I'm quick to invest my emotional energy. I take pride in being agile and quick. I enjoy showmanship, big moves and witty exchanges. There's a place for those ways of showing up, and they're not sustainable if not balanced by slower, more introspective ways of engaging. Thing is, our culture is increasingly consumed with the ideas of hustle, high effort, pushing oneself, overcoming limitations. This attitude also affects the way we engage with AI, and whether using AI at all is forgiveable. I've come to realise that as natural beings, we all have limitations. It's fine (and even necessary) to respect them instead of shaming each other into burnout.
More insights
Burnout was like a purgatory that burned away everything that was superfluous or did not serve me.
I learned about self-compassion, learned to visualise it, and it’s changed me.
Many things that used to feel spiky, I have more tolerance for.
I think for the first time I understand that humans have limitations. It's fascinating that I've not always understood that, properly grasped it. Mentally, intellectually, physically, I think I've always known. But now I understand emotionally. I have more empathy with people's limitations. My expectations have changed in the process.
Two themes that emerge from 2025 are patience and letting go. Things tend to take longer than I expect, and I take longer to realise I need to let go. As much as I tried to predict things, and as much as other people tried to predict things, something usually came up that we hadn't accounted for. Some examples:
Selling our house was supposed to happen in summer, but we're still in the process
Re-homing our sphynx Kleine Katze took two attempts – her first new human brought her back to us; her second new human is a better match than we were.
Getting an Oura ring, taking months to find out why it does not work for me, letting go of it
Starting to use Athlytics, repeatedly getting annoyed with it, letting go of it
Starting Copy School Professional, taking months to realise it's not a good fit for my lifestyle, communication style and values, letting go of it
Borrowing books, taking months to read them, letting go of being perfect about returning them on time.
Starting a 10-finger-typing course, abandoning it after moving home because now my daily routine is different.
Realising after over a year that I dread knitting the scarf I promised Holger in 2023, so letting go of that too.
Beautiful constraints – that expression has a different meaning now that I'm here in this small apartment in Amsterdam.
I like that it's small, half the size of our previous place. And I love this area of Amsterdam. There's a looseness to our neighbourhood that I really enjoy. I like being here in the evening, seeing all the lit up spaces where other people live. I can almost taste the love.
Asynchronous work is much easier for me. I’ve never liked the kind of team work where people work on the same thing at the same time. Now I’ve discovered that my favourite way to engage is on a different timeline: taking time to think about it, write about it, and then come together to talk about it.
I want to merge my interests more in what I'm talking about. Just talking about copywriting, or websites, or ethical marketing is not satisfying enough. Just writing poetry isn’t either. While important, I see all of this as a big web, a shared theme I’m calling “context engineering”: linguistics, cultural studies, knowledge management, somatics, AI – and inclusion from the point of cognitive accessibility.
My daily freewriting practice is the canary in the coal mine. If I can’t find 5 minutes to get all those random thoughts onto the page, there’s not enough slack in my day.
I want to establish a new parlour game – to make up for all the pub quizzes I’ve lost because I don’t know the original titles of most movies from my youth.
In Small World, David Lodge describes a conversation between a group of Japanese literary translators and a British literary critic. This inspired me to think of a similar game: guess the film based on its German title. (English-language movie titles are typically translated in a 2-part fashion: First a "creative" – some would say, cringe – title, then an explanatory – often equally cringe – subtitle. If you speak a language other than English, is it the same in your other languages too?
The man sitting on Persse's left, who translates maintenance manuals for Honda motorcycles, volunteers the information that he recently saw a play by Shakespeare performed by a Japanese company, entitled, "The Strange Affair of the Flesh and the Bosom." "I don't think I know that one," says Persse politely. "He means, The Merchant of Venice," Akira explains. "Is that what it's called in Japan?" says Persse with delight. "Some of the older translations of Shakespeare in our country were rather free," says Akira apologetically. "Do you know any other good ones?" "Good ones?" Akira looks puzzled. "Funny ones." "Oh!" Akira beams. It seems not to have occurred to him before that "The Strange Affair of the Flesh and the Bosom" is amusing. He ponders. "There is, 'Lust and Dream of the Transitory World,' " he says. "That is-"
"No, don't tell me-let me guess," says Persse. "Anthony and Cleopatra?" "Romeo and Juliet," says Akira. "And 'Swords of Freedom' ..." "Julius Caesar?" "Correct." "You know," says Persse, "there's the makings of a good parlour game here. You could make up your own... like, 'The Mystery of the Missing Handkerchief" for Othello, or 'A Sad Case of Early Retirement' for Lear."
Thanks for being here
This website and personal newsletter started in 2025. Thanks for signing up for the ride.
This year, I want to publish more, so you’ll hear more from me. 2026 is my year of exploring my comfort zone – consciously decreasing effort.
I’ll continue to slow down.
I’ll read a lot of science fiction. (Recommendations gratefully received!)
I’ll write and talk more about this thing called “context engineering”.
How about you? Hit reply or head to the comments and share your thoughts. I’m here to get that dialogue going, after all.
xoxo Sæb