I’ve been gainfully employed every single minute of my life since I was 15 years old. For the record, that was 25 years ago. I started out bagging groceries, and then moved to making pizza, and then to another grocery store, and finally to a historical magazine.

Now, I’m unemployed. I was pretty fine with it when it happened. Well, not fine. I thought I was prepared for it. I thought I knew what was coming. I would apply for new gigs, and I’d put serious effort into my two YouTube channels and my two blogs.

After my lukewarm experience with Mistborn I didn’t really think I’d ever go back to Brandon Sanderson. But Tress of the Emerald Sea was really good, so I decided to get back out of The Cosmere, and go back to Sanderson’s Special Projects, this time with The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England.

This book is much more science fiction than fantasy, which is a good thing, I think. It is so different from Mistborn, that I didn’t feel any lingering bad thoughts about the author that I might have if it had more similarities. Overall, I really liked this book. It is unlike any other book I’ve ever read, and it is phenomenally easy to read. It does what Tress did: it makes the entire book digestable and enjoyable without having to read a 1,000 page monster book.

I’m not calling these resolutions. Resolutions never work, they never stick. These are goals. They say that to reach towards the stars, you must first extend your hand. This is me doing just that.

• Lose 150 Pounds - Ambitious, for sure, but it can and will be done. This is the year Matt gets less fat.
• Get to 100k subscribers on YouTube for TLC - setting a goal for something you have no control over is not a good idea, but I’m doing it anyway.
• Get to 10k subscribers on Historic Alley - This will only be possible if I get my ass in gear and make content for this channel.
• Double viewership on TLC - This is probably the hardest goal on this list.
• Save $10,000 - Ambitious, considering the whole “no job yet” situation going on right now.
• Walk at least 3000 steps each day - I know it’s not a lot given that they say 10k should be your goal, but baby steps. Literally.
• Listen to 100 new-to-me artists - I want to broaden my music horizons.
• Read 50 books - Including rereads, still this is going to double the number of books I read in 2025. We’ll see how this goes.
• Get into the habit of going to bed earlier, and getting up earlier.
• Journal and Daily Note myself every day.
• Low Spend 2026 - Spend less money. Surely I can’t spend more. ffs.
• Blog 4 times each week on average.
• Stream on TLC at least once a month.
• Play 1 video game each week - I bought all these damn things, I’m going to play them all at least once.
• Learn 1 new programming language that I don’t already know. Get better at Rust.
• Record 3 new videos each week.
• Get out of the house more starting in the spring. - It’s waiting until then because I’m quite sick of winter.

I think that is all pretty ambitious. I’ll use this post at the end of the year to see how I did.

The last day of the year is here, so it’s time to look back.

Work

I lost my job this year. I knew it was coming for most of this year, but it has been surprisingly painful. It took a while to sink in, but it has definitely affected my mental health more than I thought it would. I thought I was prepared. But I wasn’t.

I do have an interview in January, and I’ve had a couple call-backs. I’m a bit hopeful, but we’ll see. The interview is for a job I’m 100% sure I’m not qualified for. I only got the interview because I know people who work there.

I like to read. I like to listen to music. I like to watch other people build stuff and make cool things. I have a lot of likes. I think that’s true of everyone. The question I’ve been asking myself recently, however, is what am I passionate about?

This feels like the wrong time to ask myself “What do you want to be when you grow up?” But that is essentially the question. 40 years old, and now it feels like I have no direction. I’m looking for new jobs, and I’ll be happy with whatever I can get, but will I be passionate about it?

The sad truth of the matter is, you don’t matter. I don’t matter. In the grand scheme of things, our lives are meaningless.

Now if that isn’t the most fucking depressing start to a blog post that anyone has ever written, then I don’t know what is. But I do have a point, but I need to talk about some personal stuff to make it.

The health of my family has been on my mind a lot lately. My brother is suffering from kidney failure, my mom’s health is declining, my dad is up there in age. Nobody lives forever. I, myself, will turn 41 years old in March. With the way I take care of myself, I’m probably well over half way through my life. Granted, I can’t know that for sure. I may croak tomorrow or I might live another 60 years.

My lack of blogging recently has bothered me. Part of it was that I was a little burnt out. I just had very little to talk about. But there was something else. Around that same time Umami decided to go to version 3.0. For those of you who don’t know, Umami is a Google Analytics alternative that is self hostable and privacy focused. The problem is, the new update is garbage. The new UI is unintuitive an requires more work to get around to stats you’d like to see.

Yes, this is late. It has been a busy few days.

Work

Wait. Work? Yeah, kinda. I got a call back a few days ago, and now have an interview scheduled for January. I received another call back today, but no interview with that one yet, they had some questions about the C/V.

I’m honestly surprised about both of these given the time of year and how shit the economy is.

I was so close, y’all. I promised myself that I would blog every day from mid-September to the end of the year. But I’ve failed. I wanted to write yesterday, but I had nothing to write about. Same with today. It’s not like I have no ideas, but nothing that I’m motivated to actually take up.

I’ve learned a few things during this process. First, forcing it is a bad idea. Most times I did fine, but there were several times where I just did not want to blog but forced one out anyway. It never felt good nor did those blog posts turn out well.