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Another Year

Posted: January 10, 2026
"Another Year" licensed under CC-BY-NC-SA-4.0 Lakuse

2025 in Retrospect

It's been a year.

Despite becoming professionally certified, my ambitions for a career in digital accessibility fell through after I gave my first a11y workshop in June. I've collected all the fragmented pieces of hubris and stashed them in a junk drawer. I will revisit them, reexamine them, rebuild them, reform them, later.

Part of the fallout from this has been picking up more part-time work. I've now been employed for a full year with the school. I picked up even more hours in September, and even more in December. Now we're at five hours per day.

I like this life.

Being paid for work I do is great. If my job did continue through the summer, it would be enough money to just scrape by if I wanted to move out and live in a bedroom in a shared house. But it doesn't continue through the summer, and that hypothetical is just wall etchings carved by something outside of myself. I live with my parents now, and the pay is more than enough. It's abundance.
I have lots of room for Toki Pona, and lots of room for other little goosechases that come seeking me out. I have my evenings completely open, meaning I can make all of my taiko commitments.
It forces me to touch grass and move my body. I walk tons (yesterday my step count was 23k). I wake up early. I get a lot of fresh air.

I will miss this life when summer 2026 comes, and then autumn arrives. I will likely enroll in school again and then things will shift again, dramatically, likely for the worse.

But just so that Future Me doesn't get too nostalgic about this time of my life:

Many of the students are mean and aggressive and enjoy when I get frustrated.
My labour is functionally unnecessary yet extremely stressful, and between students and other staff members, I am not respected by anyone, with the exception of three people (J, S, and L).
When I do have an impact on student's lives, that impact is almost always inevitably negative. It's not my fault, it's due to how my job relates to other systems in place within the school. I am only empowered to give thorns, not roses. The small roses I do try to offer are actual contrary to the existential intent of the job.

I did quite a lot of stuff with my free time. Lots of it was same as last year, but some things stood out as new experiences.

Started to become a lot more comfortable with technology. Eleventy has been a playground where I can experiment with so many weird and interesting things. Within my experimentations, LLMs serve to scaffold my learning of programming in ways that were previously not possible.
Participated in NASK and the DLK, building on my Esperanto and meeting new friends. And was able to do so with lots of financial support from KEA, I am ever grateful.

And of course, the most important new thing in my life; in August 2025, I finally got diagnosed and medicated. I get emotional even just thinking about it. It was a long time coming. Getting medicated was even more game-changing then I imagined it could be. My mental health has improved significantly, many dormant passions have been reignited. I am able to actually do things that I want to do, and not just dream despairingly, 'O, would I were a different person other than myself!'

Toki Pona Round-Up

With lots of free time, comes lots of Toki Pona. I've broken this section into my teaching activities (written in English), and my creative outputs (written in TP).

Teaching

Through 2025, I've continued to teach with a third party website for payment. This year, I also taught a select few indivuals on a volunteer basis.

In March, I set up a weekly ongoing 'LPSL club', which continues to now. I've tried to set up weekly meetings before, but things haven't stuck until now. Discord's new Events tab was crucial to making this work. I no longer have to do my own announcements and pings and cross-timezone scheduling. I simply get out of bed and teach because the calendar says that I'm teaching today.

In total, I taught 222 lessons in 2025, for a combined 222 hours. (This was a massive jump up from 2024, where the numbers were 52 hours for 59 lessons.) These figures break down into:

72h teaching Toki Pona for payment (105 lessons)
20h teaching Toki Pona as a volunteer (18 lessons)
66h teaching LPSL publically (45 lessons)
54h teaching LPSL privately (54 Lessons)

There are two students who I think progressed the most under my tutelage. Both of them were very consistent; one of them was paying me and learning Toki Pona, the other one was learning LPSL.

My primary LPSL student and I met on an almost-weekly basis. While we started off slow, I can basically now sign at full speed with them and they pick up on nearly everything. It's been incredible, and I feel really proud of them and also it's very reassuring for me. I've done a lot of teaching of LPSL. In group lessons, its hard to give tailoured feedback and to give the intermediate signers more space to practice expression. The one-on-one medium fixes all those problems and ends up being extroardinarily fruitful. I'm very, very proud of my student and I treasure the close friendship our tutoring sessions has cultivated. Very excited to see them progress even further!

toki pona la mi pali e seme lon sike #MAML?

mi awen toki pona lon tenpo suno ale lon jan mi mute poka. toki mi li awen kama wawa.

mun #W ) mi tawa tenpo kulupu pi toki pona lon ma Sanpansiko li musi mute a lon poka pi kulupu jan.
mun #T ) jan LangFocus li lukin sin e sitelen tawa ona pi toki pona la mi toki e ni: ona o sin e ijo seme.
mun #TW ) mi kama pana e sona pi luka pona lon tenpo esun ale. mi awen ni, o sona a! kulupu li lon 'kama sona' pi ilo Siko.
mun #TT ) mi pilin mute ala e wawa pali lon ijo ale.
mun #L ) wawa pali lili li kama sin. ilo Jutu la mi pali tu: toki ijo #T: ilo kute mi en tomo Koso. kin la mi open e 'lipu pi jan Lakuse'. mi pana ala e pali ni mi tawa lukin kulupu tan ni: mi wile awen pali lon ona. taso lipu pi jan Lakuse la mi pali lon tenpo mun tu wan e lipu LTT a.
mun #LW ) mi pali mute mute lon lipu 'utala.pona.la' li kama e utala musi kulupu pi lipu musi sin. tenpo suli la mi sin e ni: lipu ilo li seme lukin.
mun #LT ) mi en jan Tepo li toki e toki pona tawa tenpo kulupu suli pi toki Epelanto lon ma Towano. kin la, mi pana e pali lili tawa lipu 'suno sama' pi ona Sonja.
mun #LTW ) mi pali e lipu utala linja. suno pi toki pona la mi toki e lipu pi suno sama li toki e ni: utala musi pi lipu sin la lipu seme li wawa pona sewi tawa kulupu.
mun #LTT ) pali sin li open: lipu pi jan sin. mi pana e tenpo suli a tawa pali ni. lon mun #LL la mi pali ni.
mun #LL ) mi pali lon poka pi jan Tepo tawa ni: lipu Wikipesija pi toki pona li jo e ilo ante mute. ile ale ni o nimi seme?
mun #LW ) mi awen pali e lipu pi jan sin!!
mun #LTT ) la mi kama pana a e lipu pi jan sin tawa kulupu. mi pana la mi kama pali e ijo ante pi mute lili: 'kalama lape Kalape' (pana ala), en sin pi lipu 'luka.pona.la' (pana ala), en ni: mi pali e kulupu ni pi sitelen tawa kepeken luka pona: 'toki kili'. kin la, mi pana e pali pi mute lili tawa lipu sin Kemeka.

tenpo sike ni la mi pali e ijo mute. lipu pi jan sin li pali mi pi suli nanpa wan. tenpo sike ni la mi kama sona e ni: lon la mi ken pali e ijo suli. mi kama sona e ni kin: mi pana e pali la mi wile ala awen pali e ona. mi wile pini e pali la mi o pali mute mute mute lon pana ala. pini la mi pana. nasin ni la wile mi pi pana pali li wawa awen e pali awen wile.

tenpo sike ni la mi en jan mute li toki mute e nasin pona kulupu. nasin seme la mi ken lili e utala ike pi kulupu mi? nasin seme la ijo tu pi wile wan sama pi nasin tu ante a li ken toki pona li ken pali poka li ken pakala ala e ona sama? mi sona ala. pali ni li awen kama.

Summarized

Lots of art, increased amount of work, lots of art+work, lots of lessons learned. I really enjoyed 2025, despite some of its more unsavoury moments. I'm very grateful for the life I have. It's a position of privilege and I hope I never forget that.

2026 Look-Ahead

There are various things I want to work on this year. In general, I want my life to be more wholesome.

Habit-wise

I want to get better about my phone addiction and I want to read more. I will know I've reached my goal when the thing I reach for when I'm bored is my Kobo, and not my phone.

I also want to stop purchasing crap from TEMU.

Attitude-wise

This past year, my focus and attention has been on production and being productive. This year, I want to balance that drive and recognize when my determination is becoming too single-minded, and self-absorbed. I want to frequently check in with the overall health of the forest instead of only addressing individual trees.

Work-wise

As of right now, it is my plan to spend the next couple of years becoming an ASL interpreter. The program starts in September. In the meantime, I want to rework my relationship with the language. I want to drop my ego, I want to focus mostly on building reception skills.