Reviewing 2025: A Return to the Real World

Something weird happened to me as I was preparing to write my 2025 annual review: I realized I was much less excited to share intimate details about my life on the internet.

A lot changed for me last year–it was a transition period of sorts–no longer my old self, and not quite my new self yet. One big difference I noticed is feeling much less willing to trust the internet, and social media, and participate in it. By which I mean I became deeply disenchanted with having a visible presence online.

Social media companies are pretty gross, it turns out. We’ve known this for a while, but it’s only gotten worse with the expansion of AI. I still use Instagram to browse for art and fashion and design, but I don’t participate socially on it whatsoever. I haven’t posted on X maybe ever, Threads in over a year, and BlueSky in close to a year. I don’t have a desire to at all.

As I’ve settled into my role as a business owner and the routine it provides, gotten more comfortable with my boundaries, and learned to say no to opportunities I might have jumped at in the past but no longer have time to prioritize, I changed. I stopped caring about having a following, or being seen online. I stopped feeling like I need to prove or market myself. Everyone I care about exists in real life, in my community, and are people I can have a conversation with.

Which leaves this website, and my online presence, in limbo. My goal isn’t to stop writing here—I love writing and enjoy the work of putting together an informative article that shares knowledge. Rather, I’m separating my personal and professional personas because I no longer feel like the internet is a comfortable place to share my life.

So, instead of talking about how many times I wrote last year (a lot), or what I learned about myself by learning to dance, I want to explore goals more broadly, discuss the influence the internet and its surrounding culture has on our lives, and warn against depending on algorithms.

The Change I Experienced in Early 2025

The year began with me writing, “meditate. Go for a hike. Do something nice.” That proved to be a theme throughout the year. I’d worked hard the past two years and, while I knew this year would be challenging too, I started with the intention to remember how to disconnect and relax.

Yet, I was still trying to be active on BlueSky and Instagram, the pressure of which kept me from relaxing. I got so caught up in trying to have something to say so I could post it, or making sure I took interesting pictures, that I lost the joy in either activity.

I quit trying to post in either place pretty fast.

Around the same time, I went to GAMA Expo, and had an incredible time amongst peers in my industry. There’s a blog post about the show and what it means to me, if you’re interested. It reminded me of the importance of community and connection, helped me dispel some of my lingering imposter syndrome, and reassured me that life was enough without searching for validation online. It also helped me realize I care a great deal about sustainability in the industry, and led to me joining the Sustainability Committee as a retail representative.

Notably, I stopped posting here about halfway through the year once I realized I had major uncertainty about my priorities and intentions. It was also around this time I joined my local Chamber of Commerce and got more involved in volunteer work.

Achieving my 2025 Goals

Besides my complex feelings about 2025 and the internet as a whole, I do want to touch on some goals I achieved last year that helped me build momentum and confidence.

First of all, this is the most like myself I’ve felt in a long time. I’ve settled into being a business owner—I know what it requires of me, both in terms of actual effort spent but also how it reflects upon my personality and the caliber of person I’d like to be. But I also recognize more about myself individually–the qualities I appreciate about myself, what I’d still like to change, and how all of that fits into the world around me.

I started 2025 wanting to connect better with the world, and the people around me. I wrote that, “I am grateful for everyone in my life, their time and attention, and every moment I get to spend as a part of someone else’s life. Our time together is a privilege and a gift.”

That’s a mindset I carried throughout the year, and that’s since become a huge part of how I perceive the world. It didn’t always work out, though, and as in all things, this was a year of change. I lost people from my life who I thought would be here forever, and gained incredible new friendships and connections I never thought I’d have.

The common thread, however, is that I’ve felt more present. I enjoy the moments I share with the people around me, and crave being in the physical world, surrounded by actual people, much more than I have in years past.

Because of that focus, I was able to pull off a couple of cool things in 2025:

• I rebuilt this website using Astro and JavaScript, reducing the amount of effort it takes to maintain by an unbelievable amount.
• TEG had another year of record sales (nearly 25% up from last year, and at a significantly better margin), which allowed us to replace the flooring, upgrade store fixtures, bring in new product lines, and give out raises to the team that supports us.
• TEG had its best set release ever with Magic the Gathering: Final Fantasy, which accidentally stress-tested our procedures and helped us redesign our pre-order, pickup, and customer service workflows to become more efficient.
• TEG now offers sprue recycling (we collect leftover plastic and send it to be recycled), pays for the building to have a recycling bin, installed a water fountain, and added a sustainable games section to our catalog in an effort to cut down on waste.
• The TEG website has several more pages worth of content, is more consistently styled, is built on a new theme, and has hundreds more products live in the shop than last year.

Forming New Opinions on the Internet

Okay, so it was a good year, I made a lot of connections, and feel much more a part of my local community. Awesome. But how does that relate to not wanting to be perceived on the internet and on social media anymore?

Well, the internet is pretty toxic. Maybe it’s always been that way, but I especially notice it now. It’s only gotten worse with the inclusion of AI, which continues to be the buzzword I can’t avoid. That’s not to say I’m anti-AI on some fundamental level—I’m not. But it’s a tool, and one that increasingly seems to be a poor fit for the many facets of life we’re trying to shove it into.

AI has made Googling worse and less dependable in a lot of ways. It’s incredible how often the Gemini summary is flat-out wrong, especially when it pertains to my industry.

Meanwhile, AI has made finding information more difficult. It’s made art, and artists, more cagey, and less comfortable. It’s hard to tell now what’s real, human-made work and what’s an AI rendition of something that could exist but doesn’t. I’ve seen other business owners get obliterated by their customer base for using AI haphazardly in a marketing post or online. It’s not worth it.

Pinterest is a mess—actually, a lot of image boards are a mess. Even designer-first sites like Dribbble seem inundated with AI content. Instagram might be half AI at this point. It’s hard to find good design inspiration and real artists. I have to second-guess every design I see. Meanwhile, it’s easier than ever to become dependent on my phone.

Social media algorithms have gotten more aggressive. Terms I search a single time saturate my feed for weeks. Topics I have no interest in get pushed to the top, past everything I want to see, because it benefits the company behind the app. The news is violent, and hostile, and negative, and inflammatory, not because the world is actually worse but because it’s the only way American news seems to act.

I’m not interested in being swayed by the algorithm, although I’m sure in many ways it’s already happened. I don’t want to be turned against the people around me because of what I’m seeing online, or feel like the sky is falling. I don’t want to trust bots and algorithms on what it means to be alive rather than actually living in the real world.

Because based on the internet, you’d think the world was a nightmare and that we were all suffering, but we’re not. Yes, some things are bad. Yes, some have gotten worse, too. But overall, people are still people, we still care about each other, we still work together, and there’s still plenty of love and support and connection out there to experience.

My god Threads feels toxic now. Every time I log in I’m barraged with rage-bait, arguments, anger, and frustration. BlueSky is almost the opposite in that it’s an endless feed of criticism and “what can we do” and hand-wringing. It’s more positive, sure, but no less detached from reality. They’re both feedback loops, echo chambers born from social media, and I have no interest in participating. Social media seems inherently destructive, regardless of how many times we reboot it or throw a new skin on it.

This is what I mean when I say I’ve gotten less interested in being online.

So I’ve been disconnecting. Dancing. Writing. Reading. Taking long walks and going on trips. Hosting parties and game nights and spending time with friends. Talking with colleagues and customers. Really, I’m doing anything to be in the real world, touching real materials, and talking to real people instead of sitting behind a screen whittling my life away.

What’s Next?

This is the question I always ask myself at the beginning of the year. What do I want out of my year, and where am I going?

This comes down to two things:

• Acting in a way my future self would be proud of
• Continuing last year’s momentum into achieving this year’s goals

Vague? Yes. But those two thoughts keep me grounded and help me keep a close hold of my morals and beliefs rather than running off track when new issues arise.

It’s increasingly hard to stay focused in the modern world, I’ve found, but by remaining diligent I’m able to filter through the noise to find what matters. This year that includes building local community, growing Total Escape Games, and exploring new business ideas we haven’t previously been able to access but that have recently become available to us. Maybe we’ll move to a bigger location, or start a new store, or do something else entirely. Maybe we’ll start offering shipping and sell more online.

While I’m not sure exactly how these goals will manifest (I still have some planning to do), I feel confident that this year will provide us an opportunity to expand. We have so much positive momentum, and I’m working to increase our surface area of luck so that when something arises, we’re able to jump on it.

If, at the end of 2026, we’ve made moves to open a new location or expand the current one, and have started offering new services, and our website looks better, I’ll be happy. Even better if we continue our growth trend and hit our sales goals. And if our team is happy alongside us, and I can afford to pay them better, and offer more benefits, then that’s the real dream.

Because unlike the internet, unlike AI, unlike social media, life is built around real people in real places doing real work. Not the performance of productivity. Not grindset culture. Not 80-hour weeks. But having our needs met, enjoying our lives, and thriving.

That’s what I want to build. That’s what being a business owner means to me. Benefiting my local community and the people I care about, and helping make the world a better place in my local sphere where I can actually make a difference.

I don’t know what this year has in store, but I’ve found a sense of perspective in my own life, and that feels like a pretty worthwhile goal to work towards, to me.

I hope you achieve your goals too, and I’m wishing you all the success in the world.

Quotes From 2025

I have a habit of journaling at the end of each day. I’m not perfect about it, and I miss days at a time, but it helps me focus my thoughts and reflect on life.

From that journal, I’ve picked out a couple of particularly relevant-feeling quotes I’d like to share. I hope they inspire you the same way they inspired me as I read through my old thoughts during the past few weeks.

“I do believe that we create the world we hold inside ourselves. So I need to be more careful and deliberate about what I’m carrying around.”

“There’s no rush. Life is meant to be enjoyed, and to be taken one day at a time. No more passing each day waiting for the next in an endless cycle of playing ‘what if.’”

And on the sillier side, as I was getting back into creative fiction,

“I’m back to using dozens of commas, which is fun. There’s nothing like a labyrinth of semi-arbitrary punctuation to drag a reader into the tumbling waters of literary fiction.”