Drinking with Skeletons

2025 Year In Review

2025! What an insane year for both me and for society as a whole. Went to Hokkaido, Tokyo and Toronto. Lost my job at the ad agency and got a new one doing something very different. Played way too much pinball. Very high highs and very low lows. I wanted to write something about the year for the blog but I couldn’t really decide if I wanted to do a favorites post or a post about important stuff so I figured let’s do both but make it a little fun too. So here’s a bunch of lists about things that mattered to me this year:

MY FAVORITE ALBUMS OF 2025

  1. Ninajirachi - I Love My Computer. This gave me the same feeling I felt when I listened to Porter Robinson Worlds for the first time 10 years ago which is probably the highest praise I can give to a dance music album. Fuck My Computer is such an insane song I love it.
  2. PinkPantheress - Fancy That. It’s just a really fun album with some extremely strong singles. The remix album is also so good too and has a very stacked lineup of guests. I have tickets to see her live next year and am so excited for that.
  3. Hayden Pedigo - I’ll Be Waving As You Drive Away. Saw him open for Ichiko Aoba this year and was blown away, he’s a truly incredible guitar player and songwriter. I wasn’t too familiar with the American Primitivism movement before seeing him but it was really different to stuff that I normally listen to and I ended up checking out his whole discography.
  4. Oneohtrix Point Never - Tranquilizer. Some of his best solo work in years. A lot of very mesmerizing and cool soundscapes on this one. Need to see this one live if he tours it again.
  5. Backxwash - Only Dust Remains. Backxwash is another artist I learned about this year and I’m glad I did (Thanks Zain!). Really powerful, intense album with excellent production all around. Wake Up is such a killer song.

HONORABLE MENTIONS: f5ve - Sequence 01.5, Deftones - Private Music, Oklou - Choke Enough, Jane Remover - Revengeseekerz, Ichiko Aoba - Luminescent Creatures, Clipse - Let God Sort Em Out, Hayden Pedigo and Chat Pile - In The Earth Again

MY FAVORITE MOVIES OF 2025

Ok this one isn’t a list because I didn’t see many movies that came out this year (and looking at my Letterboxd I only gave two of them above 4 stars lol). My favorite movie of 2025 was definitely One Battle After Another. Probably the most thrilling movie I’ve seen in years and those three hours went by so fast. Gorgeously shot too. Seeing it in VistaVision spoiled me... Loved Benicio del Toro too he was amazing.

That being said, I watched a ton of older movies this year (thank you Cambridge Public Library). Here’s what stuck out to me the most:

MY FAVORITE GAMES OF 2025

I didn’t play that many new video games this year! I quit Final Fantasy XIV back at the end of January and my average time spent playing games kind of plummeted as a result, but also because I knew that while I wasn’t working I didn’t really want to be glued to a screen all day. Here’s my thoughts on games I played this year:

MY FAVORITE BOOKS AND COMICS OF 2025

This year I mostly read biographies and memoirs (and lots of comic books and manga as usual). I really like non-fiction especially when it’s about music. I don’t think any of these came out this year but here’s my list anyway:

  1. Dilla Time (Dan Charnas). I’ve been a Dilla fan for a long time, his biography was on my list and finally got around to it over the summer. I appreciated how the author weaved in snippets of music theory throughout the book as he explained Dilla’s techniques.
  2. DJ Screw: A Life in Slow Revolution (Lance Scott Walker). Really fascinating and detailed read about the Houston legend and how influential the sound he created still is. Best read while listening to his tapes.
  3. Yours Cruelly, Elvira (Cassandra Peterson). Insanely entertaining read and kind of eye opening! I think she was always destined to become a pop culture icon.

And my list of favorite comics and manga (shout out my manga book club Nathan, Liz and Frankie):

  1. Clover (CLAMP). Some of the coolest art direction and paneling I’ve seen in any manga. Great storytelling too. Shame it’ll never be finished!!
  2. Bowling With Corpses (Mike Mignola). Of course a Sean favorites list is going to have a Mike Mignola book on it. Really gorgeous artwork as always and I love the folktale vibe he’s been taking with his later stories. There’s another volume coming out next year which I am also so excited for.
  3. Opus (Satoshi Kon). Another manga with really creative paneling and super fun storytelling. I’m becoming a Satoshi Kon stan especially now that I finally watched Tokyo Godfathers too!!
  4. Saga of the Swamp Thing (Frank Miller). Frank Miller is one of those guys that everyone is like “Wow he’s such an amazing writer, everything he does is gold” and you read one of his books and you realize everyone was right.
  5. Drome (Jesse Lonegan). Grabbed a copy of this at MICE this year on a whim and fell in love with it. Love a comic that can tell a story with minimal dialogue and the art is so pretty.

MY FAVORITE HANGOUTS OF 2025

  1. Getting Insanely Plastered At Torikizoku. Toriki is a Japanese yakitori chain restaurant that stays open late, has cheap food and drinks and you get to order everything off an iPad. After a long day of walking around and doing stuff there is truly no better way to unwind. We did this multiple times on our last Japan trip and even on my birthday too.
  2. Pop’s Pinball All Night Tournament For Charity. I could have said any instance where I got together with friends to play pinball but this one was extra special because we played pinball all night, raised money for a good cause and just had a really amazing time hanging out with everyone. The night went by way too fast if we’re being honest.
  3. Learning That There’s A Group Of People In The Boston Area That Dress Up In Medieval Armor And Beat The Shit Out Of Each Other With Real Swords And They Do It At Random Breweries And Street Festivals. On a beautiful August evening myself and a few friends from pinball went to our beloved Third Time Ice Cream at the Speedway in Allston and we were delighted to learn that there was a mini ren faire happening featuring a group called the North Horde that did armored combat demonstrations and they were fucking awesome. Then like 3 weeks later at the Allston street festival we saw them AGAIN with an even better view. Honestly I kind of want to try it. I think it would fix me.
  4. Topsfield Fair. I love a county fair. I love eating delicious food and taking in all the sights. Normally The Big E is my county fair of choice but honestly it’s kind of gotten stale over the last couple years and it’s too far away. Thankfully Topsfield is way closer, has better stuff to see (pig races!!) and the food was just as good if not better.
  5. Loitering At The Park At Night. There’s a sick park near my apartment that has a bunch of stuff you can climb on so my friends and I would hang out after dark and just talk for hours. Felt very high school in a good way lol.

MY FAVORITE THINGS I SPENT MONEY ON IN 2025

  1. The Copilot Money Budgeting App. My old budgeting technique was typing everything I bought into a google spreadsheet which I think I stopped doing after a month. This does it all automatically for you and it’s a huge game changer because now I know exactly how much money I spend on takeout every month!
  2. Backing The “Norse Mythology For Bostonians” Kickstarter. It’s a book version of a funny online column I read sometimes but the real kicker is that I backed it at a level where I get drawn into the book by an artist named Matt Smith who (of course) has drawn a bunch of Hellboy books. I haven’t “officially” seen the illustration of me yet but I did see this drawing on Matt Smith’s instagram which suspiciously looks like me so… pretty cool.
  3. A Sony Trinitron CRT TV. I wanted a slightly bigger CRT for my retro game consoles and I found a really perfect one on Facebook Marketplace that happened to be a Trinitron and I understand why people like them so much now. It looks great and I was able to sell my old CRT to a rich Tufts kid so that was nice too!
  4. A Two Foot Tall Statue of Zangief From Street Fighter. I don’t think I need to say anything more about this.
  5. Nice Selvedge Denim Jeans. I got a pair of amazing jeans from a store called Dry Bones in Daikanyama Japan that are so perfect that I’m afraid to actually wear them out because I’m not used to having nice clothes. LOL!!!!

HYPERFIXATION OF THE YEAR: HALO

One fateful day during the summer me and my friends decided to play a different video game than Fortnite for a change and we went with Halo since we all had the Master Chief Collection on Steam and none of us had played it since like 2020. We went into a matchmaking lobby and kind of cleaned up if we’re being honest. That unlocked some long hidden FPS gamer gene that was laying dormant in my mind since high school and it was soon very over for me. I was obsessed with Halo when I was younger and I guess it never went away. My Xbox 360 is hooked up in my living room right now and my friends and I have been racking up the hours in campaign co-op, split screen slayer and custom games. Unfortunately though being into Halo again has brought me to dark places… namely watching a season of the Halo tv show from a few years ago. It’s really not very good!! Anyway, if you’re reading this please come to my Halo 3 LAN party I’m throwing for my birthday in a few months.

TOP 5 LIFE CHANGING EVENTS

  1. Losing My Job. This sucked and pissed me off for like a month but then it ended up being a net positive because I realized that for many reasons my job was making me so miserable that it was affecting my mood, my health and my willingness to do things. It’s very easy to just be used to being miserable all the time if that’s your default state and it can be hard to pull yourself out if you don’t realize. I wish I got out sooner but hey so it goes!! But I love my new job. Which leads me into my next one…
  2. Getting A New Job That Requires Me To Go Into The Office. I only have to go in a couple days a week but having a reason to get out of bed and shower and get dressed nice is big. Working fully remote where I don’t talk to anyone all day did not work for me after all and I feel a lot more regulated going into work and seeing people now.
  3. Quitting Final Fantasy XIV. I think I was genuinely addicted to this game LMAO but it's been getting really bad over the last few years and I finally got bored of it so those pushed me to quit. And I don’t really miss it. I was going to say I miss my friends from FF14 but I still talk to most of them so nothing really changed on that front? Anyway I’m on the computer way less so that’s a net positive.
  4. Reconnecting With Old Friends. I crossed paths with a number of old friends from different stages in my life this year and have been hanging out more, going to shows together and all that and it’s been really nice! Always fun to find out someone is living nearby that you haven’t seen in a while.
  5. Getting Really Into My Local Pinball Scene. I needed a new hobby bad and this ended up being perfect because pinball rules and the people in my local scene are amazing friends and I love them. Maybe next year I will do better at finals LOL.

MY RESOLUTIONS FOR 2026

  1. NO MORE INSTAGRAM REELS! I invite all my friends to join me in this challenge. I feel my brain rotting every time I watch reels and most of them just piss me off anyway. Death to short form video!
  2. Get Into A New Creative Hobby. I want to get back into playing music so I think that’s what I’ll do. Need to pick up a bass again.
  3. Keep Up With Healthy Habits. My gym going fluctuated between a good routine and not at all which honestly could be worse, but conversely going into work has me moving around way more than usual and I’ve been hitting 10k steps a day pretty consistently so that’s something! And I’ve been generally eating better too so I wanna keep that up.
  4. Dress Better. I want to update my wardrobe, get some cool new pieces and not just wear all black all the time hahaha.
  5. Diamond/Master Rank As Zangief In Street Fighter 6. This is my fun resolution for the year and one I’m carrying over from last year. I think I can do it if I lock in and stop being afraid of ranked and actually learn my frame data. Also it would be nice to play in locals again.

Thanks for reading my blog! 2025 was a tough year pretty much across the board but despite everything I’m feeling confident in myself. I learned how to feel like a human being again. Writing more here definitely helped too and I’m excited to keep it up (and I promise I will write more than just weekly updates). Have a happy new year and here’s to hoping 2026 is better!