Thinking about 2025

Thinking back on the crazy year on the eve of the new year has become a normal part of ending the year off. Maybe this is because of the ingrained normalcy of thinking about life in these rigid structures that cannot change. The year has 365 days. A day is 24 hours. The year ends on 31 December at 23:59:59. The new year begins the at the very second that it is not longer 2025. But in that brief millisecond before the clock strikes midnight, that liminal in-between, is a moment that belongs neither to the new nor the old. It is a strange placeless millisecond that demands some contemplation.

What happened before that millisecond? What took place in the 31 536 000 seconds that preceded it? So many seconds, so many opportunities that were taken or left behind, slept on or used properly. It does not help to think about the moments lost, because that will make for more lost time, never to be lived. But what about those moments that were used properly and productively?

At the start of the year, 2025 January, everything looked possible. I was waiting for feedback on various projects: book chapters, work applications, my then PhD in progress, article feedback, and so much more. I was part of another PhD candidate’s trail defence, a mock run of the real thing, and in this process I took note of my own defence that was still a distant memory. Then came the constant travelling to and fro between my two homes, one with my close family, the other with my fiancé. She also had her own battles to manage, including dealing with my anxiety and her own.

Time at certain places ticked by slowly; each second felt like minutes. At other times, things moved too quickly. Deadlines creeped closer, new work jumped up, a horrible experience. Each second lasted milliseconds. The day did not have enough hours.

Then it was my turn to teach another module. I said yes to the invitation to teach a year earlier; now, I regretted that decision. While teaching, or in fact preparing to teach, my father was hospitalised, I had to rewrite portions of my PhD and I had to mark what felt like a million philosophy papers.

But so, time ticked on, slowly and surely, at times too fast, and then it was time: the biggest moment of 2025. It was morning, in August, I had to defend four years’ work, a PhD that was my own. After 40 minutes of stress and angst, they called me back into the room. “Welcome doctor,” they said.