2025: A Golden Year

I turned 40 in 2025. I also turned into a blonde.

My final day of natural hair was January 11th. I had for quite some time wanted to bleach my hair. I found an old post of me wearing a wig for a Halloween costume and told a friend of mine at the time that if they agreed that the blonde hair was so me? They better support my decision to one day go full blonde. That day was the 11th.

The bleaching process itself has been a journey. Most normal people would turn to professionals, go to a salon and pay an appropriate price to get the bleaching done. I even have friends who work in the industry. I got a little advice from them but I mostly decided to go out on my own and use the wonderful world of YouTube. Specifically this guy. Thanks man.

January to March to May to September.

It first came out with a late 90s, early 2000s boy band frosting look because the guy was giving a tutorial for more of a platinum blonde thing which I really wasn’t looking for. I tried some various toners but I found that using toners often made my hair a lesser shade of blonde. I didn’t want this looking natural. My goal wasn’t to look like a natural blonde. Not even a Swedish blonde. I wasn’t going to dye my eyebrows here. I was okay with fake. Fake was the goal.

Who was my inspiration on the look? I actually realized a few weeks ago on the passing of Rob Reiner that my current look of Hawaiian shirts and bleach blonde hair resembled Kiefer Sutherland in Stand By Me. Kiefer was only 17 years old when playing that role and here I am at 40 basically using this fictional character as my fashion icon. Here’s you to Ace. And here’s to you Rob.

It was a complete coincidence that this year for Halloween I dressed up as Dread Pirate Roberts from Princess Bride, a film directed by Rob Reiner. Rob made some of my favourite films. Not just Princess Bride but Spinal Tap and The Sure Thing as well. I also think performances in The Wolf of Wall Street and New Girl are some of my favourite guest roles in anything. It really hit hard for me. #FeministPrincessBride was one of the most enjoyable things online I’ve been a part of. Anne Theriault deserves most of the credit on that but I at least helped get it rolling.

Remember when silly little things like a hashtag could be fun and cute?

The other day I realized that after around 30 years of being on the internet I’m starting to get tired of it. I’m starting to lose my enjoyment. I’m starting to consider what a life without the internet might feel like. I don’t mean being offline completely but more the social aspect of it. The social aspect wouldn’t be 30 years old but it would be 28. I started going on message boards in 1997 when I was only 12 years old. I went on all kinds of websites interacting with people. I met people who I talked to on instant messengers like AOL and ICQ. I spent so much of my life talking to people online and trying to write things or create things. This has been a major part of my life since I was becoming a teenager and now I wonder why I still do this aside from routine?

There are plenty of reasons why someone would hate to be online today. The social media websites are hellscapes now. All run by stupid billionaires given money by even stupider people, including governments. Just a cycle that feels endless where nothing gets better and everything gets worse. Throw in AI and now you don’t trust anything. You don’t trust people. You don’t respect them either. It’s all gone out the window. Even long time friends online just feel a little more distant. The internet was an escape from a boring small town life. It was a chance to develop myself outside of the world outside of the computer. It felt like I was part of something. Now I don’t know if I want to be part of anything.

I’ve been trying to get my GrapPro project going to a point where I’d feel confident spending some money on it and getting the word out. Really trying to make it more than just a hobby. And now I don’t know if even the audience I’ve cultivated is the audience I want to appeal to. It feels like that South Park episode where they go to the future and the Unified Atheist League is at war with the Allied Atheist Alliance. People can’t just enjoy pro wrestling. They have to fight for the pro wrestling they specifically like. So many people who told me they enjoyed my work due to being fair and critical about AEW have turned into toxic positivity soldiers fighting against anyone talking negative.

I’ll always write, but now I don’t know how far I want to go with it. Do I really want to spend my own money to get this out to people if that’s the audience I attract? People who only share my stuff when I’m positive about AEW and ignore it or insult it when I’m critical? That was part of why I started this. Was so people got critical AEW content they could read that was thoughtful and gave a perspective. It might not be your perspective but it isn’t a hot take or a biased attack. My views can change and grow. I can admit when I’m wrong or if something eventually worked. But if everyone who isn’t TEAM AEW all the time is cast into the fire? Maybe the world should burn. There’s no sense making this more than it could be.

That said, I’m proud of the work I’ve done. 152 GrapPro articles in 2025. Give it a read. It’s going nowhere. I just don’t know if I’m willing to grow it. Add the 29 articles I wrote for this blog including this one and I beat 2024’s total of 174 with 181 articles/blogs in 2025. I’d like to challenge myself and write something longer. I don’t know if I’m ready for a full novel. Friends of mine like Sara Macri and Jen Rinaldi both wrote in 2025 and I’m very proud of them. Maybe I’ll get there in 2026. If it takes less writing here and GrapPro to do so it might be worth it.

I also made the big decision of moving The Sweatdown from Spotify to YouTube Music for 2026. I moved all 93 of my playlists from Spotify to YouTube as I cancelled Spotify Premium. I don’t know what happens to everything I posted on Spotify after that but everything new will be posted on YouTube Music. It’s just more affordable that way. Give the playlists a listen. New one soon.

For trips in 2025 I didn’t go far. I did do a three day baseball trip to Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, and Cleveland which included a stop in Point Pleasant, West Virginia to see the giant Mothman and his museum. I also got a Mountain Dew from Little Caesars I have yet to have a drink of. That was a great trip. I was worried things would be stupid in the United States of America and while it very much is in very scary and dangerous ways (literal detainment camps with fucking alligators what the fuck are we doing) it was still a nice trip. To quote Pat Finnerty, no matter where you go? You’ll find people who are real funny, they wanna eat food, and they wanna bang it out. And they just want a comfortable couch. That’s true anywhere, including the USA. I wish they’d overthrow their government and set their data centres on fire but I also understand how they’ve successfully exhausted us to being able to do that.

I did a nice trip in Niagara Falls (spent more in the Niagara region than the tourist trap region), I did some camping, and I went to Toronto for AEW All Out 2025. I spent much of my summer on the beach and let me tell you, anyone who says sunlight doesn’t change your mood? Liars. Liars and worshippers of darkness. If there’s one religion I always understood it’s a sun worshipper. There is no point this year I have been quite as happy as I was soaking in the hot sun laying on a party island surrounded by friends and spirits.

Summer 2025.

I saw cherry blossoms bloom in April, I saw the bands Yukon Blonde and Pro Wrestling: The Band here in Windsor, and I saw Nine Inch Nails in Detroit back in August. It was a decent year thinking about the good times.

Then there’s the bad.

I talked about going to the ER in December. I ended up getting an appointment for an MRI. I didn’t get that MRI until November of this year. That’s almost an entire year since I found myself in the ER being told x-rays didn’t reveal any injuries. I finally get that MRI and found out I had a lower disc bulge, degenerative damage, and arthritis due to nerve damage.

I’ve been up and down when it comes to pain, sometimes I feel great and other times I don’t. I wasn’t feeling so bad until the weather changed to cold and I haven’t got to the gym as much. I now do more stretching at home, but the gym just provides better equipment. Ever since I found out about my back, I don’t know if it’s psychological or not, but the back has been worse.

I did have a terrible point at the Yukon Blonde show where I struggled to stand for half of the show. When I said fuck it and tried to just get through the pain, standing near the band to enjoy the music, I got through it, but I was worse for it the next day. But since the MRI results? I can’t tell if it hurts more because I know what’s happened, if it hurts more because it’s winter and arthritis is always worse in the cold, or if it’s worse because I’m not going as much to the gym. I really don’t know yet. Maybe this MRI came just as things were turning for the worse.

I’m going to do what I can, absolutely everything I can, to repair the back. I can’t afford to hit up Brazil for stem cells or the many ways athletes repair their injuries. Wish I could. What I got is a couple dollars in physio from my work coverage and and an intention to never get back surgery. I don’t want that. I know how much of a gamble that could be. Go ask Luigi. But any day I have to walk funny around people it breaks my own heart. I did a pretty good job getting to 40 without any serious back pain and injuries and now here I am. My lower back is now damaged.

All these things I wanted to do in my life, I thought I had my 40s open for me. I wanted to write more and now I have been, but now sitting down hurts. I wanted to do solo camping trips and now I’m worried my back can’t handle it. I wanted to travel and see the world and now I don’t know how much seeing I can do before the pain becomes too much. It’s scary for me. I do my best to be relaxed about it but I keep thinking maybe I did run out of time. Maybe I did miss out. Maybe I should have just gone for broke all of those times I had few options and just went somewhere and toughed it out and experienced the world despite not being able to afford it. Maybe I should have lived the wrong way a little more so I could have seen more.

I now slip into 2026 with a lower disc bulge ready to do whatever it takes to reverse it. I spent my 30s trying to get my brain right and I did. The ADHD medication works. Now I guess I have to work on the body. This will be my battle in my 40s, mitigating that disc bulge to the point where I feel good just being on my feet again. I got a standing desk in the mail. I got plans to get more workout gear for the home. I might even drop a few pounds in the new year as much as I’ll hate the lack of good food in the process. Whatever it’s going to take? I’m going to do it.

But it might also mean people having to deal with an Aaron that isn’t as mobile as he used to be. Isn’t able to be there for people as much as he used to be. And an Aaron that spends every day worried that the way he feels today, as horrible as it is from discomfort? It’s actually the best days and he doesn’t know it. Because the days going forward are going to be worse.

I hate to end this on a downer note. So it won’t be a downer note. I’m just aware of the issues. It’s no different to when I write about a silly wrestling company and talk about the issues, present or future. It doesn’t mean things are bad. It just means there are things that can be worked on to make it better, and things that need to be addressed before it gets worse. That’s also me.

So here’s to 2025. I liked you 2025. You weren’t a bad year at all, even if you brought bad news. I hope to remember this less as the year I learned my back was messed up and more the year I bleached my hair golden blonde and felt more like me. A set up for the work needed to be done in 2026 to get just a little better, even if it’s now harder to get there.

“It Feels like
Quite the opposite of real life
And I won’t stop until it heals right
Falling hard into a deep dive
I’ll hold my breath until”
– Like The Ocean by Hotel Mira

Thanks for reading. I hope you have had a good holiday and you enjoy yourself as we move into the new year. Talk soon.