Looking Back on 2025 Highlights

I've decided to continue the tradition I began last year, and post a recap of my 2025 as a creative. Feel free to skip it and come back when I post my next audio drama or piece of creative writing if this doesn't interest you. In some ways, I am treating this as a sort of annual journal entry that I can reflect back on myself, but I'm happy to have you along on the journey too.

Aside from the creative side of things, 2025 was a trying year for me personally, and in many ways, it was one of the worst years of my life. But I am grateful for the few bright spots in the year that stemmed from working on my projects, as well as some of the interactions with fellow creatives.

As with last year's post, alongside the content creation highlights, I want to catalog some of my media consumption highlights from 2025 as well. So let's go!

NOTE: Click the images/graphics to enlarge them.

Media Consumption

Music

I use Last.fm to track my music listening and I use YT Music as my main music streaming service so this data will come from both of those services.

Summary Report from Last.fm

Time of Day Report from Last.fm

There weren't many new releases that stood out to me last year, and I spent most of the year revisiting music that I already know and love. Though I did discover the music of the Miami Boys Choir last year. (Yes, I know I was years behind most of the other netizens on that one.) But there were two new projects that I did really enjoy; the new Fear EP from NF and the live album A Liturgy, A Legacy and the Songs of Rich Mullins, which is a remaster of a concert recording from several years ago featuring Andrew Peterson, Jill Phillips, Leigh Nash, Brandon Heath, and many other great artists. 

Brandon Heath has been one of my favorite artists since his major label debut in 2006. His relatable songwriting has grabbed me from the beginning. All of his albums get played throughout the year, and he was once again my top artist. His 2024 release, The Ache, is fantastic, and he dropped a new Christmas project in 2025 that is also really solid.

This little fact gave me a chuckle

2025 compared to 2024

More top albums from 2025

Podcasts

Here are a few highlights from my podcast listening last year, courtesy of Pocket Casts. The true crime kick that started last year continued. And the 1 Degree of Andy podcast, hosted by Andy Chrisman of the group 4Him, has become one of my all-time favorite shows. Andy does a fantastic job documenting the history of Contemporary Christian music through his interviews with some of the top artists, writers, and producers in the industry.

Books

I have been tracking my reading with The StoryGraph for nearly three years. I like this platform way more than Goodreads, primarily because of the clean UI, but also because they give such amazing data on your reading, as seen in the graphics below. I also continue to use LibraryThing to catalogue my own personal library of books, as I have done for almost 20 years now.

I did reach my reading goal in 2025

Here is my star rating breakdown, mood graph, and genre breakdown for the year. It wasn't the best, but it was a fairly good reading year for me.

Lastly, here's the recap of all my reading from the year. My average book rating dropped from 4.09 stars in 2024 to 3.97 in 2025. Overall, while there were some really good books, aside from several re-reads, I wasn't really blown away by any books last year that I thought were exceptionally great.

As with my podcast listening, true crime was also a big focus in my reading last year, as evidenced by the multiple Harold Schechter titles in this graphic and him being in my top authors for the year.

Creative Projects

Audio Theatre Central

Some of my favorite episodes of Audio Theatre Central in 2025 were interviews with composer Jared DePasquale and writers Torry Martin and Paul McCusker. I was also able to record an on-location interview with HeartMatters executive producer Kristie Jardot, which was also quite enjoyable. (More about that later!)

Voice Acting Roles

I didn't end up acting in as many different audio dramas as the previous year, but I did enjoy the roles I was blessed to play in 2025. These are the shows that were released in 2025, but there were a few that I recorded that were not released before the end of the year. Most were one-off characters and bit parts, but I was thrilled to be able to reprise the lead role of Philip in Season 2 of Time Truck Chronicles, which was released very early in 2025.

This one wasn't an audio drama, but I also had a great time playing the role of a senator's chief of staff in a full-cast, immersive audiobook production of a YA political thriller novel, Generations 2: The D.C. Gambit by Kenny Sargent.

My Micro Audio Projects

I did not produce nearly as much in the way of short audio projects as I would have liked. Though one of my 2024 projects, Lumi and the Daffodils, was a finalist in the UK International Radio Drama Festival, which certainly was a highlight. It didn't win, but it was still very cool to be selected.

But I did release a total of five pieces of audio: one full-fledged micro audio drama, two audio drama adjacent pieces, and two poetry narrations. I really hope I can pick up the pace in 2026.

IRL Moments

Audio Drama Institute's Making Great Audio Drama Camp

I was privileged to be asked to teach at the very first week-long summer training event from the Audio Drama Institute. It was fantastic to see the enthusiasm for the medium of audio drama and the desire to do it well from the students at this event.

Thanks to Larissa Loeffler for this photo of all the teachers

HeartMatters' Celebrating Stories of Light

In September, the non-profit ministry HeartMatters hosted an event for the cast and crew of their audio dramas at their headquarters in Oklahoma. It was an evening of food, fellowship, and entertainment that was one of the highlights of my year. It ended up being on my birthday, and the HM staff even had a birthday cake for me! It was a wonderful time to see old friends in the audio drama industry and meet some others in person for the first time. And while there, I interviewed their executive producer for Audio Theatre Central, as I referenced above.

Austin Peachey grabbed this candid snap of the event speaker, John Fornof, and me having a moment of prayer before the event 

Author Meetings

I had the opportunity to meet a few more authors in 2025, though I didn't end up getting photos with any of them. In March, I met several at the Tucson Festival of Books, including Robert Crais and Chris Mullen, whose book I am actually reading currently.

In November, I attended an event at the main branch of the Phoenix Library in the downtown area, and I met several authors there as well. Two in particular were the Christian fiction authors Sara Ella and Jennifer Deibel. I have not yet read any of Ella's work, but I did review Deibel's debut novel shortly after the event.

Phoenix Public Library

CCM Artist Meetings

Last year also brought some chances to meet some Christian music artists. I met Rachel Purcell (fka Rachel Wammack), Jason Gray, Jamie Kimmett, Chris August, and Rachael Lampa.

Conclusion & 2026 Goals

So even though there were lots of struggles in 2025, there were some great moments as well. Unfortunately, I did not make my goal of releasing 5 new episodes of One Day in Aspen Creek and only released one. I am going to do my best to surpass that this year, and would love to be able to complete the series. But the show was added to the WindowSeat platform last year, which I am happy about.

Since this goal was also missed last year, it's on my list again this year to complete the Hardy Boys feature with the Audio Drama Alliance. I would also like to finish the scripts for Season 2 of Greenhorn Tales and perhaps even start pre-production on those episodes.

I will also continue to record episodes of Content Creation Musings and already have several lined up.

And lastly, I will continue to do voice acting roles for audio drama whenever opportunities come my way.

Thanks for coming along on this little retrospective! Here's to some great projects and moments in 2026!