My 2025 Year in Review

I’ve written a “year in review” post for the last fifteen years. I highly recommend you try it. It’s a time capsule that lets you reflect on the past year, appreciate parts of it that were great, and develop a plan for the next year. You can view any of the past 15 years’ posts here: 2010,  2011,  2012,  2013,  2014,  2015,  2016,  2017,  2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024.

There are some years with very few major life changes (2023, I’m looking at you). 2025 was not one of those years. 😅

My themes for this year were: new house, new job (Libro.fm), new dog (Bucky), books, and Hardcover.

We closed on our house just after Christmas 2024. We spent two months fixing it up – repairing the foundation, adding gutters, new hot water heater, fixing sprinklers, replacing floors, replacing an AC system from the 1980s, and so much more. We moved in on February 24th, a day before our 19-year anniversary! It didn’t take long for this place to feel like home. 🏡 Since then we’ve undertaken even more projects – most recently fixing a bricked up fireplace with a gas one and beautiful tile work.

A few years earlier, back in 2022 or so, I started realizing that we wouldn’t be able to live this “retired” life forever – unless we wanted to lower our expenses to a level beyond the life we’d want. In February, a post came up on my BlueSky feed for a Ruby on Rails role at Libro.fm that made me curious. Initially I planned to not have a job this year, and spend it working on Hardcover. But the timing, combined with us spending a million dollars (only a slight exaggeration) on the new place, combined with rising prices, and an unknown political environment and stock market meant it felt like the right time to have a job. (related: Why We Traded Stocks for a House Seven Years Into FIRE, Why I Went Back to Work After 6 Years of Early Retirement)

In 2024 I started getting allergy shots with the hope that we could adopt a dog. In May 2025 things fell into place and we adopted Bucky! He’s 50 pound black golden doodle that absolutely loves us (and we love him!). He’s a quiet boy who loves car rides, needs constant attention and gets along well with our friends dogs – and even has a crush on one of them.

2025 marked 4 years of working on Hardcover. We grew from 23k users to 59k users – another 140%+ growth year! I was worried that when I got a job things would slow down, but somehow things have continued to speed up. I brought on 22 new part-time team members to fill in the gap and keep the project active – 15 of them have stuck around. I wrote a blog post that went wildly viral. We migrated from Next.js to Ruby on Rails, converted to Kubernetes to autoscale, and launched a bunch of things (including Hardcover Wrapped today).

There were areas this year that didn’t go great. Besides the obvious politics, Ukraine and Palestine, I’ve been dealing with anxiety, struggling with physical health, spending entirely too much time doom scrolling and not enough time learning & exploring. I feel most healthy when my mind and body are exercised.

All of this change at once, along with a very packed schedule, and well everything else (*waves hands dramatically*) brought up something I haven’t experienced in a long time – anxiety. The addition of a job, switching from an apartment to a house (with all the maintenance involved), adopting a dog, and trying to keep Hardcover growing has not been easy. I even had my first anxiety attack! 😱 That was months ago and fortunately hasn’t been recurring. I’m very grateful to have a partner who I’ve talked through things with and be very supportive.

After spending 6-month of 2024 working with an online personal trainer, tracking every calorie I ate and losing 20 pounds, this year I gained it all back and more. 😭 I’m still figuring out what my fitness regime looks like while fitting it into my schedule. Currently that means going to the gym MWF – but I’ve struggled to add in cardio in a way that sticks. This is a work in progress for now.

With everything happening in the news this year, there have been times I’ve fallen down the news rabbit hole, leading to entirely too much time doom scrolling. I alternated between wanting to just do something, and trying to figure out what I can actually do. Whenever I protest or join other local events I feel that energy magnified 10,000x. More recently I’ve cut out all THC – which has led to less doom scrolling and more journaling.

My 2025 Month By Month

A few years ago, I started doing a monthly breakdown. I love being able to look back and see what I thought was most important each month.

January: Sundance Film Festival, preparing the house for foundation work (removing deck, rerouting HVAC in basement), new gutters, tree trimming and various other house work. First concert for a friend (as the headliner!). Started moving some things over to the house.

February: Moved from our apartment to the new house! Joined the Wasatch Coop. 19 year anniversary with Marilyn.

March: Oscar party (it can still be a party with just 2 people right?), Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, interviewing at Libro.fm, working on Hardcover in new house. Epic Web Conference and Web Developer Challenge: Bad video player (my submission!). Foundation repair (7 days!).

April: Cherry Blossoms picnic at the Utah Capital (hanami). Alton Brown live. Started at Libro.fm. On my 2nd day I flew to Denver for their yearly offsite! New floor installation in 2 rooms. Watching friends dogs. Meow Wolf Denver (2nd time!).

May: Eurovision 2025! My birthday! Rilo Kiley at Kilby Court! Spirited Away at a Sushi restaurant with many courses! Adopting Bucky! (all of those deserve exclamation points 😂). Bees game with friends.

June: Hired 22 new people to Hardcover (!). British Field Day at Liberty Park. Pride Parade. Salt Con Board Game convention. Goonies live with Sean Astin. Sip & Script (where I was the only guy).

July: Fourth of July Camping Trip with friends, Las Vegas trip to see Lady Gaga and O (Cirque show), Peking duck at Jasmine @ the Belagio, Pioneer Day Parade.

August: Marilyns Birthday party, My Morning Jacket concert, Nine Inch Nails concert, Bike Prom.

September: Japanese Breakfast concert, OK Go concert, FanX SLC, Running a Libro.fm booth at a bookseller convention.

October: Dressed up for Halloween (Dungeon Crawler Carl themed of course), Sarah Millican comedy show, Hardcover migration to Kubernetes.

November: Marilyn’s cousins wedding in the Dominican Republic, Friendsgiving, Thanksgiving, Distant Worlds Final Fantasy Concert, cold recovery.

December: Redid our fireplace, quit THC, starting using Happy to code from my phone, tons of Hardcover work, Dragonsteel Nexus 2025, Worldhopper Ball, Hardcover Wrapped.

Creative Output

I struggled to find the energy to be as creative as I wanted this year. After 7 years without a job, trying to get back into a schedule where I could work on projects on nights and weekend was a big change.

With that, I still was able to do a few major things this year!

I wrote 23 blog posts:

• 6 on AdamFortuna.com
• 3 on Minafi
• 14 on Hardcover

Most of my creative side went towards Hardcover. In January we released the Hardcover 2024 Year in Books – removing all AI.

AdamFortuna.com – In January, I migrated the site from Next.js and Vercel to Astro on Netlify. Code is available.

At the Epic Web Convention in March, CodeTV recorded an episode on the theme Build the Most Devious Video Player. My team built a player that hit a missing niche – brid theming. 🐦

In March, we fully moved Hardcover away from Next.js and to Ruby on Rails. A blog post I wrote about the migration went viral – bringing in 60k+ views and being shared on a bunch of tech newsletter. It resulted in nearly no new users (but a few links back that could help with SEO).

I’d been trying AI coding tools over the years. I used Chat GPT to brainstorm solutions to things I was working on. I used Cursor for some of the Next.js to Rails migration. But around July 2025 I started using Claude Code which blew my mind 🤯 I started using it at work, which has allowed me to take on projects I previously wouldn’t have dared (ex: Python, DevOps, Infra). More recently I’ve been working on Hardcover issues from my phone using Happy along with CloudFlare Dev Tunnels.

The first AI Coding I tried was building out the planned Hardcover Discussions feature over a weekend which included Reddit-like discussions, Facebook like groups and Meetup-like events. It was an ambitious first project, but it worked (kind of). It was more of a learning experience for me than anything else. I designed the database tables myself, but most everything else was done by Claude. The worst thing Claude did was deploy it’s development version I was working on to Production (😱) – which broke Hardcover temporarily until I could figure out what was happening. 😅 Fortunately the migrations only created new tables.

In November, on a whim, I created the Hardcover Popular Books by Month Bump Chart to try out the latest Claude model (Opus 4.5). It leveraged a bunch of the existing charting libraries I created manually in D3.js for the Hardcover Stats pages, and was just a fun project.

Most of the other projects on Hardcover that I worked on aren’t the most noteworthy: fixing bugs, improving the experience, making it more smooth and polished. Making continuous small improvements there has set things up for 2026 to be an amazing year.

Yearly Favorites

Favorite concert: Rilo Kiley! I didn’t realize how much I binged this band’s entire catalog back in the day. I knew every word to every song. So did some of the people around me, which ended up being fun with a group of girls around us starting singing along to “A Better Son or Daughter” to each other and making friends.

Favorite meal: This is a tough one! The Spirited Away themed sushi dinner was incredible and memorable. The peking duck dinner at the Bellagio with the fountain show and cocktails was delicious – and one I keep thinking about how tasty it was.

Favorite Board Game: Dune Imperium: Uprising! We played this for the first time at SaltCon, a local board game convention, and immediately got a copy. It’s a great combination of engine building, resource management, strategy and battle.

Favorite Video Game: This is a tough one – mostly because I haven’t finished any of the games I’ve been playing. 😅 I’m in the middle of Silksong, Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth, Final Fantasy Tactics Remake, Baulders Gate 3, Split Fiction and Celeste – Mario Kart World too in that I haven’t mastered all the courses. If I had to pick a favorite it’d probably be FFVII for how it made me feel (Golden Saucer!), with Silksong a close second.

Favorite spot I visited: After a bunch of travel in 2024 (South Korea, Spain, Portugal), this year we took a bit of a travel break. I love this spot by the beach in the Dominican Republic perhaps the most.

Favorite Live Event: Alton Brown’s live show was a ton of fun, as was the O Cirque show. I think my favorite though was watching Eurovision Live at home – with a dozen or more friends and a bunch of tiny flags.

Favorite Movies: I was not great at keeping track of what I watched. A few I remember include: Kiss of the Spider Woman (2025), Sinners, Smile. I kept track of the ones I watched at Sundance 2025.

Favorite Shows: Andor S2, Pluribus S1, Adolescence, Severance S2, The Pitt S1, The Gilded Age S3, Paradise S1, Murderbot S1, Only Murders in the Building S5, Star Trek Strange New Worlds S3, White Lotus S3, The Residence S1 – and one of my unexpected favorites of the year: Bon Appetit, Your Majesty S1 😂

Favorite Books: I put together a list of my favorites this year. My top 5: Dungeon Crawler Carl (#1 of 7 in Dungeon Crawler Carl), A Drop of Corruption (#2 of 2 in Shadow of the Leviathan), The Eye of the Bedlam Bride (#6 of 7 in Dungeon Crawler Carl), Wind and Truth (#5 of 5 in The Stormlight Archive), Part of Your World (#1 of 3 in Part of Your World). I started reading romance this year, and it’s been a welcomed escape.

Favorite new programming discovery: Claude Code, for sure. For months my wife thought I was saying “clawed code”, which makes me smile whenever I think about. 🦀

Favorite Project: Getting completely off Next.js and Vercel for all projects. The Popular Books by Month Bump Chart is the kind of fun labs project I want to do more of. Hardcover Wrapped.

Favorite Course or Education Experience: To prepare for some projects we have planned on Hardcover, I’ve been going through courses on DeepLearning.ai. I’d watched courses by the main instructor on Coursera back in the day, and so far it’s been useful. Although lately learning has been more focused on using Claude Code as a collaborator and describing what I want then looking the results.

How’d I Do On My 2024 Resolutions?

I didn’t do a great job of journaling throughout the year – which is when I usually review these and see if I’m on track. Looking at them now might be the first time I’ve checked on them in months, or even since I wrote them. 😅

✅ Create a Hygge Home – Well, I’m writing this from our living room with a fire going next to me, a Christmas tree sparkling nearby, a cosy board gaming table that invites us to play more, and lots of candles. 🕯️

✅ Play lots of games (board and video) – Somehow I hit this one! I could’ve played more of both, but I played lots, and more than 2024 for sure. Fortunately I didn’t make a resolution to finish games.

✅ Welcome a dog – In May we adopted Bucky who is the bestest boy. He’s laying tummy up next to me right now.

🔶 Write at least one post here a month – I wrote 9 non-Hardcover blog posts (10 if you include this one). That’s pretty close to my target of 12. I think if I had written more it would have balanced out my anxiety more.

❌ Work on a side project (tech-specific) – Aside from a one-day hack project, and converting this site to Astro, I didn’t have any other non-Hardcover projects. I do have something I’d like to do in 2026 though, and using LLMs could enable it’s development much faster.

❌ Continue learning Japanese – I didn’t pick this one up at all. Without a clear goal in mind I haven’t felt the urge to do this. For now I’m going to put this one on the sidelines.

✅ Continue enjoying fitness – Our new place is within walking distance from a gym, which led to 80 visits in 2025. I didn’t get into a good Peloton or cardio habit this year, but I’ve recently been jumping on more often.

🔶 Grow Hardcover to ramen profitability – My hope was to grow income to where it’d pay it’s bills and some of mine. We didn’t make it to that point, but it is generating more income than we spend! Things are moving in the right direction.

4 ✅, 2 🔶, 2 ❌ – that’s not bad!

What’s Next for 2026?

Some years I’ve done monthly themes, sometimes start-stop-continue. This time I’m setting goals based on things I think I can accomplish, and if I complete them (or even work towards them) they’ll improve my life.

Cook meals from cookbooks often – A lot of this year was spent adjusting to new routines, which left little time for meal planning. That often meant throwing something together at the last minute. We have a number of cookbooks with recipes I’d love to make from a variety of cuisines. I’m planning to start the year by setting a theme per month (a cookbook) and trying to create a few recipes out of it each month.

Create and launch the new Line Of Thought App – I have an idea for an app I want to build that’ll be on iOS and Apple Watch, and NOT have a backend component. This app would be entirely on the app, which is a different paradigm than I’m used to. My incentive to build this is just for me to use it, but I’d also like to learn a bit about iOS development while I’m at it. This will be a new experience using Claude Code and Swift.

Continue staying off social media – For December I’ve largely stayed off social media. I got on Reddit for a short time (when /r/suggestmeabook announced they were going to use Hardcover for book data!), but the time on there didn’t feel like it was improving my day. I’d like to completely stay off any short form video content, and mostly off Reddit.

Deepen my marriage & relationship with my wife – This last year was a busy one. Between everything with the house, dog, job and schedule we didn’t have as much time to be around each other as the previous few years. I want to set more time aside to slow down and make sure we’re being good partners. Right now I’m thinking about topics we learned from Gottman training we attended a few years ago – like a state of the union discussion, and taking time to sit down and discuss plans.

Read more books – It’s hard to replace social media unless you have something to switch to. In my case that’s reading more books. I have a Kobo Libra Color that I love, along with a BUNCH of physical books. There are some Hardcover integrations I want to try running a calibre server too. The main time I want to read more is in the morning – staying of my phone and picking up a book instead.

Improve my online workflow an AI assistant – As I’ve gotten more into Claude Code and using LLMs for coding, I’m realizing that for just about everything I do online, coding is the bottleneck – but it no longer needs to be. With better AI-assisted processes, these bottlenecks should be me reviewing code, not writing it. Turning ideas into code is easy. Iterating those into products is the step AI’s can’t do (or at least, not without getting additional inputs from somewhere). I’ve been reading about systems like PAI for organizing this on a personal level that I’d like to try.

Get into a cardio routine – I have my gym routine down, but not so much my cardio routine. Lately I’ve enjoyed riding the Peloton more often, and want to figure out a schedule that I can stick to and not be overwhelmed by. I have a few spots in my schedule I want to try this, with the hope some will stick.

Get digitally organized – Over the years I’ve let my very organized life slip more and more. Now I have photos that aren’t backed up, notes spread across 4 different platforms, 0kb files locally that are artifacts of a botched Dropbox sync and more. I’d like to clean things up, improve backup strategies locally and in the cloud and embrace Obsidian for organization.

Create a Community on Hardcover – For a social media site, Hardcover has very few community features. We’ve pushed the biggest social aspects to get the foundation right, and keep the community on Discord. I have a big goal in mind for this project, and it’s the one I’m most looking forward to this year. We’ve talked to dozens of users, done surveys, talked to users on Discord, prototyped pages – we know what we want to build, we just have to do it.

Practice being present without improving anything – I want to regularly do things that don’t improve me, scale, or ship. This can mean aimless walks with Bucky, board games or video games without the stress of finishing, meditating, or other things that have no specific goal in mind.

Thanks for Reading!

Whew that’s 3,593 words, 30% longer than last year. I suspect it’s because I haven’t written much this year I’m making up for it now. 😅

Adam