2025: From the Belly of the Whale to the Land of Adventure.
A reflection on the past year, and what's next in 2026
First, some good news.
No matter your feelings about the past year, there’s still been plenty of good news around the world that we too often ignore. Let’s take a quick look at some of the things that went well this year:
Also, if you haven’t been following Robert Irwin’s rise to stardom, then you missed out on one of the most feel-good stories of the year. I hope this brightens your day as it has many of mine:
My year through an archetypal lens.
If you follow my work, you know my affinity for Jung’s Hero’s Journey and Campbell’s Monomyth. I have always found that the best way to make sense of life's chaos is to view our experiences through these archetypal lenses. For me, the “Call to Adventure” actually arrived two years ago when we decided to move to France, but the transition that followed was anything but a straight line.
Instead, I found myself in the “Belly of the Whale.” It’s the classic stage of the mythic cycle defined by limbo and the shedding of the old self. This state of waiting characterized the entirety of last year and bled heavily into the beginning of 2025. We were stuck in a trans-Atlantic waiting room for my wife’s visa, a process that ultimately took two years to resolve. During that time, I was busy mopping up the remnants of my previous life in the US, which included the heavy lifting of finalizing a bankruptcy for a failed business venture and the sudden loss of a remote job that was supposed to follow me across the ocean. It was a period of dissolution and of waiting for the world to turn.
The threshold appeared in April when the visa was granted. We spent the following weeks in a whirlwind of activity, selling or donating nearly everything we owned until our lives were distilled down to just three suitcases. We packed the baby and the dog, moved into my mom’s for a few weeks, and flew to France in late July. It felt as though we had pulled off the impossible. Thanks to my father’s help, we found a small house to rent in his and my sister’s village, secured a car, and began the arduous but rewarding process of integration. I “disembarked” into this new land, with my first three books translated into French, and immediately started a book tour across the region. Like Noah being delivered to a new land, the whale had finally spat me out onto the shore of adventure.
Of course, the delivery to a new land only signals the start of the “Road of Trials.” The latter half of the year was a wild ride of navigating the complexities of French administration while trying to get my author business off the ground. Yet, amidst these trials, the universe began to provide in ways I couldn’t have predicted. I received a traditional publishing offer from Vinci Books, which will rebrand my Hastings books and launch them in ten languages across eighty countries. At a book fair in Saumur, I met the Secrétaire Général of a museum association who invited me to consult on their museums to promote them better in the anglophone world. This opportunity marries my business experience with my passion for history. To cap off the year, my Vikingology Podcast co-host Terri and I produced some fascinating podcast episodes, leading to an invitation to record with HistoryHit’s Gone Medieval podcast, which airs this January 27th.
And just before the year ended, I got these from Vinci Books. Don’t they look great?!
Looking forward to 2026.
As I look toward 2026, the slow start of 2025 has transformed into powerful momentum. I am preparing to teach two courses for Medievalists.net and overseeing the global rebrand of my novels. Another Hasting novel (the sixth) is written and will hit the editor’s desk in January, with an early summer release planned through Vinci Books. I also started a new YouTube channel to put my teaching background to use, as you may have seen, and plan to keep developing the content over the next year.
On a slightly different but related note, a Christmas conversation with my French grandfather helped me solidify my newest initiative: executive coaching. By combining my seemingly disparate experiences as a former personal trainer and athletic coach, a school teacher, a student of Jungian psychology, an award-winning novelist, a business consultant, and a man in recovery, I believe I’ve found my “Ikigai.” I am adapting the Hero’s Journey as a template for personal change and growth to help business leaders, whom I already consult, overcome their liabilities (or what I call “Tyranny”) and become more effective leaders in their businesses and communities. It occurred to me that my consulting usually takes that route anyway because the root causes that drive business leaders to seek consultants aren’t business problems, but ones tied to their own shadow. I’ve written a short forthcoming book titled “Leadership in the Tyrant’s Shadow,” which outlines my approach and framework. More on that later.
Thank you all for being part of this journey. My fans do the heavy lifting, and without you, none of this would have been possible!
Be well, and Happy New Year! 🥳