I have finally made my way through all the one thousand photos I took in Japan.

With both me and Ingrid interested in taking a lot of pictures, it was a very photo-heavy trip. I think I spent more time photographing than I’ve ever had the chance to do while travelling together with other people. Which felt like a true luxury – it’s so nice that mine and Ingrid’s priorities meshed so well.

On the downside, as I said, a tonne of photos to process afterwards.

One month – to the day – after we came home, I’ve processed them all. Culled and cropped and fixed and sorted and uploaded. There are now a whole lot of posts in the Japan category here on the blog.

It was more work than I had foreseen; this was a whole project. In order to keep it manageable without me buckling under the workload and giving up, I focused on just the photos for now, so there’s no commentary. Yet. I am firmly determined to write about everything as well. I’ll let you know when I’ve done that and then you can scroll through them all again if you want. As usual, my own future self is an important member of the audience here, and even if you all have gone on and lost interest in the Japan posts, I will want to write down my thoughts and memories for her.

I am away on a two-week vacation together with Ingrid. I had very definite plans to keep blogging, brought my computer and everything. Somehow we’ve ended up having such long days that all we do when we get back to our hotel room is collapse on the bed. I guess I will end up with another giant blogging backlog after all.

While I was waiting for my replacement computer and the blogging backlog was getting all out of hand, I just threw all my photos up here without any commentary. I’ve now gone through all of them and added words. There’s no earth-shattering news there, but if you were wondering why I posted about blood on my floors, or what the deal was with the cheesecake, well, now you can scroll down and read all about it.

All past photos are up now and regular posting will resume tomorrow.

Meanwhile the laptop I got and returned has reached a workshop, the problem has been confirmed, and they’re now preparing a new one for me. This is taking forever.

The photo backlog is growing to a scary size and I still don’t have a computer. Drastic measures are needed. I’ve given in and installed Lightroom on my work laptop, hoping that nobody will care in the (hopefully) short time that it will be there. I’ve got weeks and weeks of posting to catch up with. Doing it the usual, thorough way would take way too long so I’ll just throw them up without commentary and maybe fill that in someday later. Better than nothing.

Doing the rest of 2025 today and following with what’s passed of 2026 shortly. You’ll have to scroll down past the non-photo points to view them all, or go to the daily photos category.

For a day or two I had a new laptop. From the very start it was clear that the D key on the keyboard was misbehaving, and I would have to return it. I got a day or two with it, while the returns procedure was being sorted out, and now I am without again. The phone covers immediate, urgent needs, and the work laptop can be used in a pinch for some tasks where the phone just isn’t enough, but overall this is very inconvenient.

My first year after the divorce. That deserves a post of its own, so I’ll leave it at that for now.

Adrian and Ingrid are here every other week. The move on Sunday evenings is a bit of a hassle for everyone, but in general I think we’ve all settled in well into the new routines.

The divorce was a trigger to cleaning out stuff in all kinds of corners of the house, from old CDs to decades-old phone bills. Cleaning out the basement came with bonus infestation of mice.

2025 was also my first year at Active Solution, after seven years at tretton37, which imploded spectacularly, ending in a bankruptcy last January. Active Solution as employer is as similar to tretton37 as I could find, and I brought Sortera with me as a client, so the change was much smaller than it could have been. Since I don’t actually work with any of my colleagues, it’s taking time for me to get to know them and feel like I’m part of the gang.

The two company conferences have been most beneficial in that aspect: actually spending time together, talking about coding, getting to know each other. First an amazing trip to Monte Isola in April (day 1, day 2, day 3), and in the autumn a weekend sailing to an island in the archipelago.

Other travels included the usual trip to Estonia, which was as it always is: meeting friends and family, having fun. New for this year was my first ever time on a SUP board.

In August Ingrid and I had a long weekend in the Stockholm archipelago (day 1, day 2, day 3, day 4). The archipelago is almost too close to home – I’ve never spent any significant time there. This was a great introduction and I plan to do more of it in the future.

During autumn break, Adrian and I went to London. It’s important to me, one of my favourite places in the world, and I have so many memories from there, that I wanted to share it with Adrian. (day 1, day 2, day 3, day 4).

I also did two four-day hikes on the Sörmlandsleden trail, one from Hälleforsnäs to Katrineholm (stages 23 to 27) and the other from Kolmården to Katrineholm (32 to 27). I think I’ve done about half of the entire trail now. Might be done before retirement if I continue at this pace, haha.

Other hobbies were mostly craftsy. Mostly I knitted a lot, unsurprisingly. The larger projects this year were one orange sweater, one red cardigan, and one white dress (of which I haven’t been able to post a final photo because of my broken laptop). In between there were socks and hats and such, as well as a pair of slippers (notable because they were my first intentionally felted item).

At my embroidery club, the highlights include me finishing the Stockholm scene as well as our textile printing workshop.

I baked more than I’ve ever done before. Bread, karask, cakes, buns, Christmas goodies. Eric was always the baker in our house – he was both more interested and (as a result) more experienced. I am not willing to go without all the good stuff so I’ve learned. Cakes are not a challenge – just follow a recipe and you’ll be good. But breads and buns require technique and timing and experience. Mine have all come out OK, most even really good, with one or two notable exceptions. I don’t feel confident about my bread-baking skills at all, so every success feels like a major win.

In the garden, I finished planting the area in the front corner.

In other news, I switched to stronger glasses – and should probably upgrade again, I suspect.

Of the wider world, the one thing worth mentioning is the proliferation of AI everywhere.

Ingrid got her driver’s license and finished gymnasium and celebrated it with garden party. She’ll be doing military service starting in March and filled in most of the gap with a 4-month paid internship at Transdev.

Adrian did a week-long work experience “thing” at a pizzeria and started his last year of primary school.

My laptop died today, after nearly eight years of loyal service.

The charging port has been unreliable for months. Yesterday the charging cable head got blisteringly hot and wouldn’t charge any more. At first it looked like it was a problem with the charger – I plugged in a different charger and all looked good. Percentages going up, no overheating. Today, though, even the other one wouldn’t work. The battery is old enough that without a charger I can get maybe a couple of hours’ of use out of it.

I have been planning to buy a new laptop since this spring, not only because of the worn-out battery but because the old one is old. It won’t let me upgrade the operating system because the hardware doesn’t support the latest version, and that in turn means that I cannot update the Office package, and some other software. So it really is time.

Nevertheless I kept postponing buying a new one because there were always other, more time-sensitive purchases to be made. Now all the delaying left me with the worst timing possible: not only because of money (of which I have less than usual due to Christmas gifts, and just having paid for flights and hotels for a vacation in February) but also because all the shops will be full of last-minute Christmas shoppers. I’ll have to manage until past Christmas Eve at least.

My work laptop (which is what I’m using this moment) will fill part of the gap in the meantime but I have no way to process or even access the photos from my camera, so I won’t be posting any of those for a while.

Meanwhile I will be off to research laptops. Do I stick with a Macbook, which I like and am used to? If I get a Windows laptop for about half the price, will I regret it daily for the next five years?

I just noticed that the “On this day” feature at the top of the blog is giving me suggestions from twenty years ago. This blog has been live for twenty years. Go me!

2006 was still a time of specialized forums and personal blogs, when individuals and small groups had control over what they posted, who could read it, and where it appeared. The focus was on creativity and sharing, rather than influencing or hating. The web was a happier place back then. So was all of society, actually. More innocent, optimistic, honest and social.

I’m glad I set up my online presence before centralized social media like Facebook etc. It is important to me that my posts will not appear next to ads for busty blondes, or hate-inducing content from Russian troll brigades. I don’t need to worry about losing everything I have ever posted because the platform goes bust or gets acquired or decides to lock me out.

Some years ago I did wonder whether I should start cross-posting to Instagram, to make it easier for people to see my posts, but never got around to it. Then it got acquired, added videos, and now it’s gone the way of all other social media – full of marketing instead of connecting with your friends. I thought I was missing out but that problem disappeared on its own by just waiting. Instagram came, rose, appealed, and got enshittified within, what, ten years?

Some forums still exist. Blogs technically exist but these days they are mostly a thing that companies add to their websites for marketing and SEO purposes. More and more often filled with AI-generated swill.

Will we ever find our way back to honesty and good will online? There’s enough awareness that the current state of online “social media” is damaging that perhaps the pendulum will swing back one day.

It’s been ten months since we agreed to divorce, six since Eric moved out, and three since it was officially finalised. And it’s still taking up a whole lot of space in my head. I can be out walking, thinking about something random, and one thought leads to another, which leads to a third, and suddenly I’m thinking about the divorce again. There are all these thoughts and feelings I have about it, and our relationship, and its failure – mostly its failure – and since I haven’t let them out, they’re still in there. I am kind of fed up with them.

For the sake of my own peace of mind, I need to get them out. Writing helps me clarify and organise my thoughts, and this blog is the place where I usually do that, so I will also be putting the divorce thoughts here. A kind of writing therapy, if you will.

That’s going to be more personal than most of my posts, and I do realise that not everyone will feel comfortable reading about that. Not that I’ll be airing any dirty laundry or exposing juicy, intimate details, but still. Maybe you’re close to Eric and don’t feel comfortable with getting my (inevitably) one-sided view of things. Or that kind of personal, emotional, fraught content might simply not be what you’re here for. So I’ll be putting those posts up in a “collapsed” format with a link that you can click if you actually want to see the details. Again, these are primarily for my own sake – as this blog as a whole has always been.

There will be around twenty posts in total, based on my current notes. (I did say I have a lot thoughts about this.)