Dome Pondering

2025 brought depth and growth.  In many ways, 2025 provided so many challenges and opportunities, allowing for a deeper, more layered approach to the world we live in. Our world is changing, and often, not for the better. Over the last 365 days, life has been more complex, more exhausting, and is asking so much more of us through these transitions and nuances than it did 365 days ago.  No big deal, right?  But hey, you're here. We're here. And we're going into 2026 much stronger, whether we realize it or not. But before we do, let's bid adieu to 2025.  As always, I'm incredibly gratefu l to those of you who still visit this little speck of the internet that houses my thoughts, rambles, and learnings. Thank you for taking a break from instant dopamine hits and videos, and likely the much cooler options of prepared content and indulging my humbled words. It is much appreciated.  It's the 20th annual - TWENTY YEARS of doing this! - Dome Pondering Year in Review. Le...

2024 felt exhausting. It was shifty in many ways, but the word "exhausting" keeps coming back to mind as 2024 felt like a constant crisis in areas that truly aren't crises, on top of the already occurring crises.  That sentence was exhausting.  As mentioned in my Most Fascinating Things of 2024, the year felt like it was about culture and society, and we surely battled and attacked everything. Like, everything! EVERY. SINGLE. THING! And of course, we lived through an eventful political season that was the Presidential election.  Exhale...breathe...wheeeewwwww! 2024, you're even tiring in thought.  Before we get to it all, as always, I would like to thank all of you for your continued support and reading of this little site called Dome Pondering. I've somehow come full circle where I punch the keys whenever life allows, and truly from a place of freedom (since the pressure for "content" is via social media). I appreciate all of you for sticking with thoug...

In 2023, your boy went through it, ya'll.  And I'm sure you did, too. Didn't we all?  2023 was quite the year. And for the world that we all share our experiences within, it certainly provided an aura that was heavy, and felt like the world around us was always on fire.  Nonetheless, we're at the finish line, and if writing these Year in Reviews for the past eighteen years has taught me anything, it's that the opportunity to enjoy the opportunity for reflection and give thanks is the most salient part of this review process.  And as always, that starts with you, the reader of this little site called Dome Pondering. Again, I can't contribute as much as I'd like, but when I do, I thank you for checking in, for the support, and even for the occasional feedback. It's always - always! - appreciated.  So let's get on with this thing. As is customary, let's hand out the usual end-of-the-year Pondy Awards and I'll put a bow on my 2023 with some per...

What a wildly, polarizing year that was 2022.  Sure, as we close the year, 2020 feels like a decade ago, and "pandemic life" seems like a time that is difficult to remember (or understand). Yet, no matter how much we attempt to pull away, the awfulness of 2020 and all of its impact has left us in 2022 unpacking from it, cleaning up after it, restoring ourselves after it, and/or learning to deal with lingering leftovers as we move forward.  2022 was the perfect bundle of reflection and renewal. For good, bad, excellent, and worse.  Before jumping into this year's Year in Review, I want to THANK YOU , the continued reader of this blog and this eighteenth edition (!) of the Dome Pondering - Year in Review. It is not lost on me that my contribution to this site has slowed down (as such is life), and of course, the world consumes content in a much different (and some would say easier, but not better) way. Yet, after all of these years, it's still pretty damn cool to see th...