My flavors of the month for 2025

I love learning. I think it’s been foundational to the success I’ve had.e had in my career. But ever so often things outside of my current role catch my eye and I dive deep on them. Over the years I’ve had enough of these that my wife affectionately calls them “flavors of the month.”

These don’t always make it a full month, and sometimes a month isn’t enough. An easy example is golf, one of the few that I actually remember which month it was: May 2021, because I watched a left-handed golfer win the PGA championship. And that fascination with golf is still sticking around.

But what about for this year? There is one huge one that a few other flavors have branched off from.

Formula 1

I blame my sister and brother-in-law. But this has been building for years. This year, I got enough YouTube recommendations and targeted ads that when I saw my sister wearing a McLaren shirt, I asked her about it. To which my BIL recommended I check out Drive to Survive on Netflix if I was interested since the season hadn’t yet started.

I watched the season of DTS covering the 2023 F1 season within 3 days. I have since watched every qualifying, sprint qualifying, sprint race, Grand Prix, every season ever of Drive to Survive that has been on tv. And also I watched the movie Rush, went to see the F1 Movie in theaters (which was my first time going to a theater since 2019!) and F1 podcasts make up almost 20% of my subscribed to podcasts, and makes up almost 40% of my listening time this year. And I listen to a ton of podcasts.

Since this started in probably February or March, it’s definitely lasted more than a month. And I can see this one just not fading much like golf. Sports are just different for me, I don’t dislike any sport, I just dedicate more time to some over others. And F1 is the perfect Motorsport for me.

With this major “flavor” there has been many offshoots that are related to F1 that have turned into their own flavors of the month.

Motorsport

F1 is the pinnacle, but IndyCar is still pretty fun to watch, especially on street circuits. I’ve tried nascar but it just didn’t grab me. GT races are just a little too long for me to watch the entire race, but I enjoy watching them in little stints. And MotoGP makes my stomach drop to watch, but at the same time is very exciting because of it.

This is much closer to a flavor of the month. I watched a ton of different types of Motorsport after I had really gotten into F1. I enjoyed most of it, learned a ton but moved on from really watching anything besides F1.

Watches

How is that related to F1? Just watch a Grand Prix and lookup the brands you don’t recognize that advertise on the cars. Or maybe you do recognize. I barely knew any of them at first. Rolex doesn’t sponsor F1 anymore, and that was really the only watch brand that I knew that made expensive watches that you can’t buy at Walmart. Well, they don’t sponsor F1 currently at least, watching every season of DTS I know they used to be where Tag Heuer is now.

But not just Tag Heuer; Richard Mille, IWC, Tudor, and others are all major sponsors on F1 cars. So I look them up, and they’re expensive watches. Too expensive for me. But this coincided with other forces in my life, in fact, I wrote about those forces here.

Suffice to say, after 10 years of wearing an Apple Watch, I thought it was time to go back to a non-smartwatch. I’ve always worn a watch, prior to the Apple Watch, my watches came to me at an average cost floating around $10 and didn’t last very long sold by stores that don’t exist anymore (RIP K-Mart).

So now I get obsessed with watches. And this obsession is sticking around. I’m noticing the pattern of connecting to things that I’ve always loved like sports or the mechanics of watches (I’m an engineer who’s always worn one 🤷), those flavors usually bust way past the “flavor of the month” moniker.

For the time being, budgets being budgets and responsibility to my family being more important, I’ll live with the $60 Timex Chronograph (at time of purchase, also not an affiliate link) that I have grown fond of.

I can feel this turning from a flavor of the month into a lifelong passion for watches and timepieces.¹

Hot Wheels

Another fascination from my youth resurfacing. This has an obvious connection to F1 as they released a F1 Hot Wheels collection this year. But I never actually bought those.

I just bought what I liked at my local store and played with my kids with them. It did turn into a real flavor of the month where I research die casting and trying to see if I can get a hot wheel model of every car I’ve ever owned. Turns out I’ve only owned boring cars and I can’t get a single one, but I digress.

This came and went within the month, but I still have a row of my favorite finds from that month on my desk I. My home office.

Cars

This is another obvious connection to F1 and the last on this list that is a direct descendant. But watching F1 made me much more interested in how cars worked than I ever have in my life.

I’ve already mentioned that of all the cars I’ve ever owned I don’t think a single one has ever become a hot wheel. And that’s because I like to go for cheap, reliable cars that don’t have much flash if any. I’ve always thought of cars as necessary but an annoying expense. But I never really knew much about them.

Now, I’ve read numerous articles on every different aspect of the drive train, this series was my favorite. I also watched every episode of Roadworth Rescues which provides so much information about older cars and how to keep them running.

This has gone beyond just Formula 1 cars to just cars in general, I’m not sure how long I’ll be paying this close of attention to cars, but I know I’ve learned a lot of practical knowledge that will help me through the rest of my life as a car owner.

Fountain pens

Woah, finally something that isn’t directly related to F1! In fact, I have no connection in my brain between the two. This is a completely organic flavor of the month that arose separately. I also do know exactly where it came from, one of my favorite blogs that I’ve been following since at least 2013, Art of Manliness writer Brett McKay included the following blurb in one of his Odds and Ends Saturday emails:

I was cleaning out my junk drawer the other day and rediscovered a Pilot Varsity fountain pen that had been buried under loose playing cards and earbuds. I’d used these disposable fountain pens quite a bit years ago when I first got into fountain pens. But as with many hobby phases, I’d drifted apart from them. Picking up that Varsity again reminded me just how much fun it is to write with a fountain pen. It’s really satisfying the way the ink flows onto paper. At around $3 each, the Varsity is the perfect gateway drug for anyone curious about fountain pens but hesitant to drop serious money on a nice Lamy or Pilot Metropolitan. When you get your Varsity, make sure to read our article on how to write with a fountain pen!

I was a curious one, so I picked up the fountain pen sampler pack from JetPens. And it has been very nice using these.

To be honest, I have way too many thoughts on writing utensils and instruments for this particular post. I’ll leave it with these are now a regular part of my rotation when writing something.

Rapid fire

This list is just from this year. I asked my wife for some of my past flavors of the month and removing ones already mentioned leaves this list.

• Cards
• Poker
• Music and Music theory
• Golf
• Tank tops
• Darts

I have thoughts on all of these, maybe for another time.