2025 - A Review
2025 Yearly Recap
A Year of Building, Shipping, and Showing the Work
2025 was the year things stopped being ideas in progress and started becoming systems with gravity. Across code, writing, travel, and creative work, the through-line was consistency: small, composable pieces that add up to something durable.
The pace was intentional. Ship in public. Measure lightly. Let curiosity decide what compounds.
Open Source and Engineering
This was a deeply technical year, but not driven by framework churn. It was about foundations.
- Continued deep investment in Rust, especially for CLI and TUI tooling
- Multiple self-authored tools reached real usability:
- Static resume generation
- Budgeting and finance tooling
- Audio and scrobbling infrastructure
- Strong preference for:
- Plain data formats
- Deterministic builds
- Git as a source of truth
- Clear move away from "just ship JSON" toward intentional data modeling
Alongside that:
- Declarative systems (NixOS, Docker Compose, reproducible infra)
- CLI-first design, with UI as a layer rather than a dependency
- Energy-aware and sustainability-minded technical choices
A recurring pattern this year: build tools you actually want to use, then refine them until they feel obvious.
Writing, Blogging, and Metrics
In 2025, the blog stopped feeling like a side project and started acting like a signal.
- Consistent long-form technical writing
- Multi-part series and deep dives
- Willingness to publish unfinished thinking and iterate publicly
The results were quiet but meaningful:
- Organic traffic from multiple search engines
- Readers arriving via GitHub, chat tools, and RSS
- Early signs of compounding interest rather than spikes
Metrics stayed in their place: feedback, not validation.
Travel and Perspective Shifts
Travel this year was less about movement and more about recalibration.
Time spent in Europe, especially Central Europe, reinforced:
- A preference for walkable cities
- Public transit that works
- Slower, more deliberate daily rhythms
It also sharpened longer-term thinking around relocation, digital-nomad feasibility, and how much infrastructure is actually needed to live well.
This wasn't escapism. It was alignment.
Disc Golf, Outdoors, and Sustainability
Disc golf remained a grounding constant.
Not just as a hobby, but as:
- A recurring design constraint (maps, data, APIs)
- A sustainability touchstone
- A reminder that systems should work outside, not just on screens
The focus subtly shifted from collecting and optimizing toward understanding spaces:
- Courses as designed environments
- Flow, access, and maintenance
- How technology can support, not dominate, physical experiences
Creative Work Beyond Code
2025 also made room for making things with your hands.
- Pottery experiments
- Tufting and material exploration
- Visual identity and logo work
These fed back into engineering work by reinforcing:
- Process over output
- Material constraints
- Iteration without metrics
That cross-pollination showed up everywhere.
Career and Direction
Professionally, this was a year of alignment.
The focus moved further toward:
- Open-source adjacent work
- Tooling that empowers communities
- Infrastructure that disappears when it works
Rather than chasing titles or hype, the emphasis stayed on:
- Taste
- Maintainability
- Systems that still make sense six months later
The result was confidence rooted in practice, not positioning.
The Shape of Things Going Forward
If 2024 was about exploration, 2025 was about integration.
There is now:
- A coherent technical stack
- A public body of work
- Clear values around sustainability, simplicity, and ownership
Most importantly, the year ends with momentum that feels calm rather than frantic.
That is the kind that lasts.