I will say: this year was like no other year. Here is my year-end reflection for 2025.
2025 was the year where the ground—both literal and emotional—kept shifting beneath my feet, and I was asked, again and again, to find my balance without clinging too tightly to certainty or any of my desired outcomes.
Natural Disasters (Continued)
After the flood of the century back in October 2024, there was a 7.7 magnitude earthquake in March 2025 that rattled my cage and literally shook the ground under my feet. The house shook, I felt dizzy, saw the water containers on the counter shaking and remembered being in earthquakes in California… I ran out of the house.
I moved accommodations once again to get out of the flood plain. That displacement and disruption is one I don’t care to experience again.
Living through these natural disasters will change your relationship to place. Safety becomes less theoretical. I began paying more attention to building construction and the land itself—where water gathers, where the earth gives way—and to how little control we actually have.
Travel
Traveling to Turkey and Egypt for a couple of months was one of the highlights of the year. The history of the regions is so vast and incredible, almost impossible to comprehend all at once. The mystery of the great pyramids and the history of the byzantine and ottoman empires. The immersion into the culture and society was fantastic, inspiring and humbling at the same time.
It reminded me that way I like to travel… on a one-way ticket, with plans held loosely, continues to be the right way for me. I learned so much, not just from the historical palaces, museums and ruins, but from living into the heartbeat of day to day life, conversations with the locals and the rhythm of the communities. The experiences continue to reverberate inside me long after I returned.
Earlier in the year, I traveled to Rayong during the smokey season to escape some of the agricultural burn in Northern Thailand and the corresponding PM2.5 air pollution. It was good to be near the sea, to breathe more easily and to celebrate Songkran, the Thai New Year. Marked by water fights, cleansing, and wishes for good fortune. A reminder that renewal is often a physical expression before it’s symbolic.
Agarwood / Oud
I spent some time in BKK this year. It’s the only place in Thailand where I can get my TAG watch fixed and where there is an official Apple store. It’s also where there is a real concentration of perfumeries specializing in agarwood oil… or oud, as it’s known in Arabic.
My education around agarwood and oud oils has reached a kind of plateau. I visited a couple of factories and learned more about the biology of the tree, the laws, the sourcing and the controversies surrounding the harvesting and production. The complexities of it all, including its wonderful aroma, deepened my respect for the craft.
Oud remains a fascination for me. I enjoy the subtleties of oils from different parts of Asia. The way geography, soil composition, time, and process leave their unique fingerprint on hoe each oil smells. Oud been a consistent study for me over the last several years, and this year I feel rewarded for my patience, rather than any mastery I think I may have gained.
Activities
My soap making continued throughout the year as well, though not without challenge. The quality and consistency of soap making materials here aren’t the same as in the U.S., which makes choosing the shops and brands more complicated.
I also learned that the Thai government requires inspections of soap making facilities and registration of each recipe. With fees that differ for foreigners and Thai nationals. It quickly became clear that it’s nearly impossible for anyone to afford selling homemade soap under these regulations.
For me, it wasn’t worth the effort nor the risk. Soap making will remain what it always meant for me, a hobby to enjoy, to share and to practice without any performance pressure.
Self care, walking, cycling, the local markets, and cooking my own food remain a big focus of my daily life.
The $1,000,000 questions
The most common I am asked are… “Why did you move to Chiang Mai?” and “Why did you leave your country?”
Life here allows for great simplicity. There is modern, Western-style consumerism, where foreigners can spend their usual price tag of a $100 on a steak dinner. And there are local shops where you can buy inexpensive hardware, plumbing fixtures and the freshest fruit and vegetables.
What I appreciate is the ability to live in both worlds. I can support the international economy by buying Nike walking shoes from the mall, and support the local economy and eat $1.50 noodles. It’s a genuine dichotomy and one that feels balanced.
I think most people already know why I left America. Gun violence hit too close to home, and it no longer felt safe. Here, I live in a quiet village, in a single level home and never lock my door, I leave my bicycle outside, unlocked. I don’t worry.
Perhaps, for the first time in my life, I sleep in peace. Without the low grade anxiety of violence or theft looming in the background.
Family, Community & The Relational
One of the biggest challenges for me is leaving my community behind and establishing a new one. I continue regular video calls with the people back home who mean the most to me. At the same time, some relationships have fallen away due to distance, change and difference.
This year, I committed myself to getting out more and meeting more people. I’ve been fortunate to be introduced to several expat circles that invite real connection. A “philosophy table” at a local coffee shop, a Canadian expat group, a men’s meat-up group (the name alone tends to draw some attention) gathering once a week for lunch… and I got an invitation to the local Rotary Club
The Rotary Club, in particular, stirred something familiar. Their work focuses on supplying water to hill tribes in Northern Thailand, and being there brought me closer to my father, who once served as president of his Rotary chapter in Colorado.
This year, something shifted in me. I reached out to my 82-year-old mother after six years after estrangement. For years being told by both her and my brother not to have contact. My email was welcomed and well received.
At the same time, the deeper rupture, the betrayal and the unspoken harm, remains unaddressed. Maintaining clear boundaries feels necessary. Protective. Living in Thailand and witnessing the strength of family bonds here often leaves me wondering why family members can be so willing to sever them.
The Relational
I’ve learned a great deal about Thai culture during my time here over the years. Particularly the concepts of kreng jai and saving face. There are beautiful embedded in these ways of being… thoughtfulness, restraint, and care in the choice of words so not to hurt others.
And yet there is another side. When people do not speak, feelings are carried silently and never given a chance to clear. Eventually, the emotional weight becomes too much, and what emerges is not dialogue but emotional whiplash.
Many people say they want honest relationships and the ability to speak the truth. But honesty requires emotional intelligence… knowing oneself, tolerating discomfort and cultivating the capacity to listening. Often, there isn’t much of it.
People blaming others for making them feel “not good”, rarely taking responsibility for their internal emotional states.
Thai women often blame men for dishonesty, betrayal and the burden of financial responsibility. Men blame women for not caring for them emotionally and physically, the justification for their infidelity. I can’t help but wonder… with more emotional intelligence and deeper listening ability, could people talk about their problems and work them out before they harden into resentment?
My particular way of being… open, reflective, unafraid, honest, willing to take relational risks, mirroring back what I see, not especially quiet… seems…. paradoxically… to be more welcomed here than it ever was in America.
More often than not, I receive feedback that my presence is appreciated, that I see people clearly. And, yes, there are times when my way of communicating is not welcomed, when I am shut down. That is also part of the relational terrain I have to navigate.
In Closing…
If 2025 taught me anything, it’s that peace isn’t the avoidance of disruption—but how to live within it, without being undone when it arrives.
I’ve learned to trust more of what I’ve been practicing over the years—the focusing of attention, the discipline of listening, maintaining clear boundaries, and a fuller presence to life’s unfolding… these continue to shape how I choose to move through the world.
Peace isn’t the absence of disturbance. It’s the capacity to remain non-reactive, grounded, and humble and awake in my imperfect human existence, even while standing in the middle of ongoing upheavals.
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