It’s 9:07pm on Wednesday, 31 December. New Year’s Eve. I’m sitting in our lounge room watching television with Mum. She’s got the remote and is flicking through New Year’s Eve coverage, from Sydney bands and festivities to an Elton John concert where he’s currently singing Bennie and the Jets. Mum and I have decided we’ll watch the fireworks at midnight, but until then we’re stuck with fairly average TV.
Before I share my final thoughts for 2025 with you, I’ll tell you what I’ve been up to lately.
Last Monday, the 22nd, was Mum’s 79th birthday. It felt like a significant one for her, because a year from now she believes things start to get serious. I don’t necessarily think 80 is old. Mum has a friend who’s a physician and is 81 years old, and he still works at a hospital, helping with surgeries on a casual basis. Still, I can understand how someone might develop a bit of a complex about turning 80.
Mum and I have plans to go to Europe to celebrate her 80th, so her birthday last week was a strong reminder that I need to knuckle down and save some money to make that happen. Below you can see the big, beautiful bunch of flowers I sent Mum from the East End Flower Market.
I donated plasma again last Tuesday, the 23rd. It was my fourth donation. After the second time I donated I got really sick, and I worried that I might not be able to donate again. I’m glad I went back, though, because I haven’t had any trouble since.
During the short interview you have before donating, I was talking with the phlebotomist and she mentioned they had been extremely busy following the Bondi shootings. She told me that around 90,000 people around Australia signed up as donors to help. That number was huge! While I didn’t book my appointment specifically in response to the Bondi events, I hoped my plasma might still be of some use given the current shortages.
Below you can see the view from the very comfortable chair I lay in while donating plasma, and the next photo shows two chairs just like the one I was in.
Below you can see the large letters spelling ZOO, made into a sculptural installation out the front.
Muhammad had just finished Year 12 and is moving to Hobart, Tasmania, to study medicine. Heartbreakingly, Maureen is moving to Brisbane to study engineering, so we spent a lot of time talking about their upcoming moves. It was the first time I’d met Muhammad and I liked him straight away — he was quietly confident and seemed to know a little bit about everything, with plenty of interesting fun facts.
Below you can see the other guests enjoying lunch.
At lunch we exchanged presents. Maureen gave Mum and me these beautiful handbags, and we gave her some jewellery. We also gave both of them a $150 Mastercard voucher. I gave Mum her Apple Watch. I’d been really looking forward to giving it to her and she loved it.
I also think Apple Watches — and possibly other smart watches — are a vital tool for older people. In particular, I’m thinking of the fall-detection function, where if the wearer has a fall the watch can call an ambulance and notify family members. As soon as I found out it could do that, I knew I had to get one for Mum. We haven’t set it up yet, but that’s the first thing we’re going to do tomorrow, on New Year’s Day.
I really enjoyed the lunch at the zoo. Sometimes I don’t order vegetarian and just avoid the meat, but this time I listed it as a dietary requirement. Sometimes it’s good to do that, because more often than not the chef knows what they’re doing — and it was tasty. When dessert arrived, I thought about my brief vocational detour into wanting to be a chef, and I realised that if I had gone down that path, I would have presented my desserts exactly like this.
I love it when chefs put flowers on their meals. Whatever the course, I think it adds a really nice touch.
As the conversation wound down, I did slip into a slightly impassioned monologue about Toxoplasma gondii, but Mum asked me not to talk about it at the table. For a brief moment, I reverted back to being eight years old and being told off by my mother. I was really just telling Maureen and Muhammad how incredible this parasite is, but I can see how Mum didn’t think it was appropriate Christmas lunch conversation. We decided it was time to go and have a look at some of the animals.
Mum has mobility issues and sometimes struggles with long distances, so for the first time in her life she told me she would need a wheelchair to get around the zoo. I organised this with the zoo staff and pushed her around. It was a slightly surreal experience, but she wasn’t self-conscious about it at all — in fact, she said it was the best way to see the zoo. The first animals we saw were the pandas. One of them was tucked away inside, but the one pictured below put on a real show for everyone.
The next animals we saw were the giraffes. I love giraffes — they’re so graceful, and they always make me think about evolution and the way their long necks developed to reach food. I couldn’t get a great photo, but below you can see a young giraffe.
I’m not going to say what it was, or even allude to it. I’ll just say this: we live in a fucked up world where unimaginable things happen, and people are capable of literally anything. There is a lot that goes on quietly, behind closed doors, that most of us would never think possible.
Below you can see a couple of goats perched at the top of a mound of rocks. I love that about goats — they’re always heading for higher ground. I also love that they head-butt each other. They climb higher, face things head-on, don’t overthink it, and then go and eat something on a cliff. I love them, and I want a pet goat.
When the results came through, he called me, and I could hear the heartbreak in his voice. He hadn’t gotten the job. The candidates had been ranked, and Maiki came in at number six — missing out by just one place. He was told that if someone proved unsuitable or if another role became available, he wouldn’t need to reapply and would be next in line. Still, he was broken. I really felt his pain. He wanted one of those jobs more than anything, and this time, it just didn’t happen. I felt like crying as we talked.
He was devastated for the evening, but to his credit, the next day he got up and was bright as sunshine again. I personally believe something good will come from this for him, but I don’t want to get his hopes up.
The final thing of interest involving me this year was a letter to the editor I wrote about Albo and his participation in a pro-Palestinian rally early in his career. I sent it through on Tuesday. They didn’t it publish today, and I don’t think it will — but you can read the letter below.
Dear the Editor,
Rather than seeing this as something that should now be questioned or demonised, I felt proud that Australia’s Prime Minister has a history of standing up for the rights of the Palestinian people.
Palestinians have lived for decades under a military occupation marked by dispossession, restrictions on movement, collective punishment, and the routine denial of basic rights. Speaking out against this reality is not radical; it is an acknowledgement of long-documented human suffering and a call for dignity under international law.
In recent public debate, advocacy for Palestinian rights is too often treated with suspicion or deliberately mischaracterised. Criticism of the policies of the Israeli government is not hatred of Jewish people, nor is it an endorsement of violence. Drawing a parallel between these two things silences legitimate concern and erodes our ability to speak honestly about injustice.
That our Prime Minister once stood publicly in solidarity with Palestinians facing occupation and brutality reassures me that compassion and moral clarity still have a place in Australian political life.
I’ve been reflecting on 2025 and I have realised that I did — literally — nothing. I wasn’t studying or working. I wasn’t raising a family. I literally did nothing. What I can say is that I volunteered with the service and I continue volunteering with the human rights organisation I work with. But if I had to stand before God and justify my existence, I don’t think I would know what to say.
I have so many ideas and things I want to do, but I’m not doing them. The other thing is, I know it’s not good to compare yourself to other people, but sometimes I feel like I don’t realise how old I actually am. People my age are generally married, have older kids, are mid-career, own a house, and are financially stable. I am so far away from anything like that that it’s almost shameful. I think a psychologist would say that I am developmentally delayed — like I missed a milestone which then made it impossible to move on. To flourish.
The truth is, my life stopped in 2011 after I was let go from the Downing Centre District Court. I’ve been thinking about that a lot over the last few months. I loved that judge. I did. I believe it can happen. I believe you can fall in love with someone even if they don’t love you back. I don’t think it’s immature or illegitimate. I think unrequited love is a valid form of love, and like any kind of love, it is irrational and unmanageable.
I did move on from that, but the consequences of my own actions followed me for what feels like a lifetime, and I just couldn’t let it go. But if I do let it go, it means that all the life I’ve lost — the husband I never had, the children that were never born — if I let it go, that all means nothing. It was all for nothing. And I’m not sure I’m prepared to do that.
The creative inspiration I felt from that judge was like nothing I have experienced in my life. I was overwhelmed with creativity and ideas, and that’s when I decided I wanted to be an artist. But I don’t know if I have or will ever have the executive function to bring my ideas to life.
I’ve been unbelievably inspired again — not in a romantic way, just in a way that tells me excellence and justice are real things. And I want to make art to express the way that makes me feel.
As I let go of this year, I am literally letting go of a waste of life. Potential slipping away. I am going to do better next year. I’m not going to bounce out of bed and start whipping out bold, controversial pieces of conceptual art. But I am going to be passionate. I am going to be consistent. And I am going to make damn sure that I don’t waste 2026 in the way I have wasted — let’s face it — the past fifteen years of my life.
