2025 - A year to forget - Andy Coughlan

I always hated this time of year as a kid. The adverts weren't Christmassy any more, the news showed nothing but reviews of the year, and the magic was rudely consigned to the galvanised dustbins with the shredded wrapping.

But, as the review of the year tradition still seems to be going strong, here's mine.

The bad bits

2025 was, generally, an unmitigated disaster. An annus horribilis the likes of which I have not yet endured.

To begin, my incredibly brave and strong wife had to endure the devastation of being told she had cancer. Nothing prepares you for that. Thankfully, she bore it all with grit and determination, and by mid-year she was given the all-clear. Phew.

Not three weeks after my wife went under the knife, I did too for a long-overdue hernia repair (I have no idea how I got it, I can only assume it was some kind of hang-over from the days of the giant Trace Elliott bass amp). Cue three months of agony and hobbling about like an old man. What a pair we were, ouching and oofing all over the place.

On the work front, my contract with Southwark Council came to a frustrating end mid-year, just as we were in a position to start doing what I'd been brought in to do properly. Then, thanks to the most inept and appalling government known to man, the contractor market (for content designers, at least) vanished. Not a single call from an agent from June to November. Then just before Christmas, I got an interview! I got the job! And then got told the job had been offered to someone else, so it wasn't mine after all! Merry Christmas, Coggers!

Death also came a-calling with the sad passing of Ken Colley in the summer. I felt particularly bad because, since times Covidian, I didn't feel I'd given Ken as much time as I wanted to, and was hoping to use the time off over the summer to make amends for that. It was not to be.

On the plus side

There have been some upsides to the year, thankfully.

The biggest one is meeting and getting to know my editor. Not only has she been a fantastic source of encouragement and common sense with my novel, she's also been a tremendous source of advice and support for my wife, and for that I'm truly grateful.

I'd spent most of 2024 getting rejections for my novel from countless confused agents. I was at my wits end trying to fathom out what I'd done wrong. My editor saw the issues immediately. I'll detail these in a separate post, but needless to say, I spent much of the year scratching my head trying to make sense of what she was telling me, as I'd got it wrong on so many levels. It was a year of thinking hard and working hard, culminating in some very exciting epiphanies.

As the year draws to a close, I feel like I'm on the right track with the book. It feels so much better for all the changes I've made (and am still making). 2026 will be the year I get it published, one way or another (or at least on its way to being published, if there are any agents prepared to give me a second chance).

The other upside to having so much down-time, was the amount of iOS and web apps I've developed, which include:

Plus a raft of half-finished projects still in development, including this system I write to you now on, which I call Outpost. Alas, none of these have made me any money (yet), but working on them did keep me sane while the worst that life could throw at us was flying about. Some I'm particularly proud of – Political Circle, Infini3 and WordMaze, in particular.

So there we go. 2025 did it's best to repeatedly trip us up, but I feel like we've come out of it a lot stronger and in a much better position than going in.

Bring on 2026!