Some years start off fresh and full of promise. This was not one of them.

Instead, 2025 kicked in my door, dumped a bucket of germs on my household, and made itself at home. For almost a month the doctors could only seem to tell us what it wasn’t. Just as I finally started feeling human again, I walked straight into an event that reminded me why I’d rather be heard and not seen.

At the Social Media Summit, put on by Magic Mile Media, I experienced a moment of wishing the world would open up and swallow me. I had pre-recorded a voice-over introduction for the speakers and panelists. Because my primary focus is news, I was late arriving and walked in just in time to hear my own voice introducing a speaker. After a decade in a call center, I have a pretty spectacular customer service voice—but it's not one I ever want to hear.

To make matters even worse, about an hour into my being there, while I was happily eating lunch from the best food truck (Uncle Fred’s, for those unfortunate enough to have never experienced their jerk chicken), BJ Murphy, owner of Magic Mile Media and host of the summit, decided to pause the event. He announced that it was my voice being used for the introductions and then had me wave at the crowd like a famous person.

If you know me at all, you know I don’t like attention like that. I prefer my kudos in text—quiet and far away from any living, breathing person within a 50-mile radius. If it weren’t for the fact that I seem to collect extroverts in every area of my life, I think I’d have disappeared into obscurity a long time ago. It’s a walking contradiction that I’ve come to accept as a personality trait: as much as I don’t want to be seen, I want to be read. Heard, but not seen. Probably a result of a lifetime of being told children should be seen and not heard—so naturally, my rebellious nature chose the exact opposite approach.

That moment when BJ turned all eyes on me? My brain replayed it on a loop for the next 24 hours, obsessing over it in the way my brain tends to do. And when my brain latches onto something, it doesn’t let go—whether it's an awkward moment or an idea.

Sometimes I get an idea, and that idea turns into an all-consuming entity. When the idea is healthy or productive, no one looks at me sideways when I spend eight to ten hours a day after work bringing it to fruition. If the idea is toxic, the outcome is still the same. Usually, my obsessions involve whatever new course or class I’m taking, but sometimes it’s something I have no skill in.

Last week, I woke up, and my first thought was: Could AI help me create an app for Neuse News? Turns out, it can. It took about sixty hours of obsession and sheer force of will, but I built an Android app from start to finish. Now, I want to duplicate the process for iPhones, but I’ve hit a roadblock in outdated technology. Still, it was an incredible experience.

I may never know what I will obsess over next, but at least now I have tools available to help navigate whatever I’m trying to learn.