2025 – Snark & Sass

Hi,

Rather than faff about with a title, I’m just going to dive in. Well, What’s in a blog title anyway? There’s only so many riffs on ‘end of the year’ titles.

I think I’m (hopefully) far away from clickbait. You’ll not believe this one thing, Lynn found out! Well, maybe you would ‘cos their ain’t much new under the sun 😉 Maybe some personal revelations, TIL (Today I Learned), and Well, That I Did Not Know. Learning curves, I guess.

I nearly went with 2025: Big Oofs & Little Wins, but wins suggests losses and little – obvs! – small or inconsequential. Besides, do I really want to go through the -ahem- toxic swamp in listening the bad stuff folk were involved in? I think most of us are fully aware of the hot mess moral panic distract-o-tron output.

Mind you, I will just reference Beck’s 90s banger, Loser, given the lyric: Forces of evil in a bozo nightmare.

Plus ça change, amirite? 😉

Method

Hmm. Here’s the thing with a yearly wrap up; do you go with things chronologically or try to shuffle the beautiful randomness of life, into some type of order? 🤔

Light in the bleak midwinter

Looking through blog posts and my journal, the early months seemed quite hard. I seemed to be still on the anxiety wheel and that’s various factors for that.

I think…. that the issue was an unpleasant mix of demands, workload, and attack. The latter I think we know the usual suspects 🙄, whereas the former two; no blame, just observation.

The Every Lovely Mrs J’s health had been better and Grandad & Granny J – Mrs J’s folks – needed more help, bless them. I think we were helping Wee Man try to get settled and info employment too.

Classic sandwich generation stuff, where you’re trying to balance home life, work, your kids, and the needs of aging parents. Again, not grumbling, but observing. You just gotta do what you can. Yup, pull on the Magical Big Girl Pants and get your adult on 🙂

Of course, if you’re not careful, that Give 100% Sprint becomes the regular pace…. and I am so not a sprinter 😉 Not even if there’s cake on offer or a sale a Perfect Classy Heels At A Good Price.

But I do know that things were getting slightly easier. I think the conversations with friends and the counselor I was seeing all helped. Things started to click into place and the sprint dropped pace a bit. Yeah, a few peaks still, but less 100% and back to hills & drops.

I had the good fortune to find a day when both Val and I were free. Our diaries are difficult to align due to different commitments, but this time it all ran smoothly.

Not in the post, but in the comments, Sue coined the term Posibloggers™️. I do struggle with… balancing the want to discuss and make sense of some of the nasty out there. But I think it’s better to focus on the good, even if I think – or more accurately, worry falsely – that I’m Pollyanna-ing things…. Which of course I would not say to a friend, so maybe that worry should get in the bin. 🙂

Snark & Sass

In Interesting Times, I guess there’s a number of ways you can deal with it. Certainly the later Spring months saw protests to push back against the unpleasantness. In later months there would be action from the Good Law Project and statements from Translucent on the anti trans situation.

With the change of UK government, I had hoped we might see a more compassionate and people focused approach to governance…. Yeah, that didn’t happen. Our local MP has been trying and has certainly engaged & listened. I think 2025 may have been when my engagement stepped up a notch. Perhaps some of the fear I had at folk making the Richard & Lynn connection has dropped a bit.

Of course, if you can’t get power to change, the other option is to try and show how ridiculous certain things are. This meant a rich vein of material for the Shade posts. Even now, I can’t bring myself to call them comedy or even satire!

• The Cabal
• The Network
• Piblington Baggage

Oh, talking of sass – ah, there arrives the blog post title! – Nicola (of Wigeroo) gave me a hair restyle and I was so pleased with it. I think I may have to learn that a bob style needs to be my go-to.

Oh and in May, the BBC released a dramatisation of Paris Lees’ novel, What I Feels Like For A Girl. I felt that the acting, script, and production were spot on. The series was not always easy to watch and it did poke a few buttons that didn’t need that. Still, history is what you survive 🩷

Looking at the Do Not Look Other post, seems I managed a cheeky time out too.

Summer

I’ll skip my comments on the weather as I think we all know, my Celtic blood doesn’t do warm 😁

“Climate change? Aye, we’d have snow from December to February, fog in Autumn, and no Phew, It’s A Scorcher – unless you mean it’s just hit 21C in high summer!” 😉

On a different note, the financial pigeons came home to roost at work. Given it’s seen a number of the top brass go before Xmas, even Muggins here could tell the writing was on the wall. I guess the question was how would things go?

The short of it is I put in to leave. Longer: I didn’t fancy being out into a proverbial tombola to see what job I might fall on. That and I didn’t want to ‘fight’ a colleague for their role or be against anyone. That’s just not me. It was time to go and with the redundancy & personal circumstances, the right choice.

Some time around the above shenanigans, Grandad J passed away, bless him. He’d been unwell with a degenerative neural condition for a few years, and as sad as it was to close the last chapter of his life, we think it was time.

I’ve heard it said that being made redundant or losing someone are two of the most stressful things you can go through….

( Warning ! Gallows humour: I suppose dying personally is a bit worrying, but at the end, I guess you don’t care! 🙂 )

… and yet…. I was glad to have the time to be there with Granny J and try to help. Again, on with the Magical Big Girl Pants and you do your best to be kind and offer help. This has carried on because I’m still between jobs, and dare I say, it’s been a lovely use of time. No KPI BS or office dramas, just honest conversation and being with people you care about ♥️

This summer I was so pleased to not have the traditional meltdown and displacement activity of panic shopping. With all year round smooth pins, I have felt so much more at ease at who I am. My clothes move better on my body and when I’m getting dressed in the morning, that’s no yuk factor.

Autumn & On

With time came opportunity to catch up on things at home. A very late second Spring clean; tackling the driveway; helping Wee Man & partner move to a new flat; helping Granny J ‘drive’ her mobility scooter; teaching Child 2.0 how to drive: all good news and happy memories! ♥️

With the better time meant I had time to think about T stuff, and that provided head space to create Lessons Learned: Part XVI – The route to new. I think that’s probably the most in-depth post I’ve written. Certainly the longest and most thoughtful too.

I also rejoined Crossdresser Heaven after a very long absence. I don’t really think the word describes who I am – I still think genderfluid means more to my situation (even if I say I’m under the trans umbrella.) But A) no judgement, B) maybe it does for others, and C) just ‘cos genderfluid feels right for me, everyone is different 🩷 Not better or worse, just different. It’s a place to hear from others and also somewhere I can share the Lessons Learned archives with a new audience.

I had a good chat with the owner, Vanessa, as we were both bloggers back in the day. Sheesh: I think that might have been a decade ago or more! Still, great to see Vanessa and the team build the site into something new and that it’s still going strong. Plus, it’s not InstaTrollXface surveillance capitalism psyops, so that’s another win 😁

With cooler weather, I had the good fortune to be out & about a bit more: Good Luck Getting A Pace On, Pride and The Slow Outing Club.

As Autumn’s magic of darker nights and frosty evenings came around, Chams had their Halloween party. This time around I been planning a while – well, even if I hadn’t got the hat situation fully sorted. Still, I was rather pleased with the last minute idea if using the plasma globe as a prop

A different type of magic as this year I was lucky enough to celebrate YATGB’s twentieth anniversary. My, that’s a lot of blogging, interesting comments, and reflections over the years! A bit on from that date, the Jones Long Term Memory system provided a few extra thoughts on Aide Memoir.

So, what’s next?

There’s just a few days left of this year and I’m hoping 2026 will see a return to kindness. I sincerely hope that folk start to see that hate & division are both distraction and they do nothing for us as society.

If we’re making a wish for 2026, I’d like world peace and the end of trillion/billionaires. Come on, no-one is worth that much. Think of how many people you could feed, diseases eradicated, and children saved. Okay, I’ll put the soapbox away 😉

In terms of resolutions for the new year, I think I’ll go with the off-the-cuff answer to Ally’s question on them.

For me: Be kind when possible, be aware of if the ego is talking rather than wise mind, and try to worry less.

I am hopeful that some karma may come my way in terms of employment. Not that I’m tired of behind a non gender specific entity of leisure 😁 But I think doing something I’m good at, that would be nice. I have had a lovely, productive chat with another organisation, so fingers crossed for the new year eh? 🤞

Mind you, so would this for the virtual office… 🙂

As to what 2026 holds, I don’t know. I hope to see the performative cruelty take a big drop, and I wonder if we’re close to the AI* bubble bursting. That might be good for jobs, RAM prices, and the environment.

( * I guess I’ll need to hand draw the goblin images 🙂 )

Oh, talking of the latter, please do have a look at Positive Dot News’ yearly wrap up. It mostly certainly isn’t all doom & gloom! 🙏

As for you, dear readers, thank you for your thoughtful comments, feedback, email, and continuing to tell your truth on being somewhere under the trans rainbow 🌈 I hope the new year is kind to you & yours! 🩷

Stay awesome,
Lynn
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