Survive Until 2025 | 2501

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Survive Until 2025

This year already feels a little strange. Despite the calendar turning over from January to February, I still feel stuck in 2024. Last year still remains unfinished. I have two half-finished writing projects I still need to complete, and a big decision that needs to be put to bed.

2024 is leaning over into this 2025 in a way that makes everything feel precarious. The longer these unresolved things remain with me, the worse it gets. That 2024 isn’t really over, despite a lot of effort being expended to close them down, day by day the whole structure feels like it could come crashing down.

And It’s making me reflect on how I approach time and transition:

If you listened to Episode 2430, you’ll know the big news—Permanently Moved’s 301 format is ending this year. After seven years, I think 301, 301 second long episodes is enough. This is episode 284, so I’m in the final stretch. 

It’s strange knowing that the  most important and creatively fulfilling project of my life thus far is nearing its conclusion. But surprisingly, it’s not bittersweet. When I first realised the show actually had an endpoint back in 2023, I thought I might be sad to begin the end. But in the actual event of it – I’m excited. I have 18 more episodes left in this format, and I want to enjoy them—I want to make the most of every single one.

As part of preparing for wind down, I’ve been working on properly archiving all the old early episodes. Up until now, they weren’t fully available on my blog. For some unfathomable reason, back in 2018 I originally wanted the podcast to exist separately from my blog, audio only. So I didn’t put the scripts/text up online. I’m not sure why, but after some time—and some nudging from peers—thankfully, I finally changed my mind in 2020.

So I’ve been working through the backlog, copying, pasting, and editing old scripts from dusty old Google Docs onto my WordPress. I’m only doing two two a day, slow but steady, as it’s not important, or a major thing.

But I’ve made some good progress—I should be done next week. There are just 9 left to do. 

What’s been interesting is that through the process of doing this tedious admin, I’ve been spending a lot of time with an older version of myself.

So it’s not just 2024 pressing forward into 2025, with this archive project—it’s 2020, 19, and 2018 too. All leaning over me into 2025. In revisiting these old episodes which until now have never had transcripts, I’ve come face to face with a past self who had no idea what was ahead or what he was doing or where he was going. The other day I came across a line that stopped me in my tracks. In the first episode of 2019—1000 Mph Club—I said:

“Survive till 2025”.

It was a bit of a shock to see myself from six years ago, reach out across time and space to speak to a future self-Me right now-Here in 2025. 

And you know what? Whilst things have been extremely weird, and they certainly haven’t been easy.  I did survive until 2025. 

But still, the sentiment concerns me, or rather it explains to me a few things. That perhaps I’d had this attitude filed away as a bedrock in my unconscious mind. A self imposed time limit, or a time scale in which to get things done.

But here we are in 2025. This year, Permanently Moved is changing, but not ending. Other things are shifting too—not just the culmination of a creative work I’ve been at from 2018 to 2025, but in my professional and probably in personal life as well. 

I’m looking forward to it. Which is a new feeling. For most of my life, I’ve resisted change, preferring to operate within familiar structures and patterns. But after everything—the last half-decade of making this show, writing, working, everything that’s happened and still happening in and to the world—I actually feel ready. I’m looking forward to what’s next. 

Survived till 2025

I’m not saying it’ll be easy, of course. There’s a lot to untangle, to bring to a close, and to begin. But I think it will be worth it.

I’ll assume that you also all know that I don’t do New Year’s resolutions. Instead I like to think of aspirations—vectors, directions that I’m moving toward, rather than away from. I like the term vector as when applied to the direction of ideas they warp and shape reality – and they can deform it. Like a river’s erosion, a small trickle can become a grand valley.

Also I don’t make resolutions because I’m always too caught up in closing out the previous year to properly think about the year ahead. I’m a summer baby, so if I do want to make changes, do new things, or adopt new habits, they tend to happen around my birthday instead.

So for this year, I’ll keep moving forward, one step at a time. Wrapping things up, clearing space, and setting the course for what comes next. The past might be leaning into the present, but I don’t have to stay caught in its weight. I just need to close it down.

This year feels different doesn’t it? Maybe that’s because I’m different too. I think it’s going to be a good one. I’m not just surviving now—I’m stepping forward.