2025

2025 was the hardest year of my life.

I went in thinking it would be the year I would never have to do a job again. Build something, have freedom, be the person who figured it out early. None of it went that way.

The startup failed. I tried freelancing. Tried side projects. Freelancing especially drained something out of me. The client calls, the constant follow-ups, managing expectations. I didn't want any of it.

But looking back, the startup failing wasn't really what broke me. The actual problem was something I hadn't expected: I had already hit the goals I set five years ago.

I was a teenager who needed to pay his own college fees. I figured out how to code, landed clients, built things, made money. Done. I achieved it. And somewhere in 2025, I realized I didn't know what came next. My old goals weren't big enough to carry me forward, and I hadn't built new ones yet. So I was moving, but without any real direction. That confusion made everything harder than it needed to be.

The thing is, I didn't completely stop. I kept doing something. Kept moving, even when it felt slow and pointless. That might be the only thing I actually did right that year.

I used to watch YouTube videos from older people talking about life lessons, regrets, mistakes they made. I thought if I paid close enough attention I could absorb their experience and skip certain pain. Understand it in theory and not have to live through it.

That's not how it works.

Some things you have to go through yourself. You can read about failure, understand it in theory, but you don't feel what it actually costs until you're in it. And something about being in it is what does the teaching.

2025 changed me. I'm not as sad as I was. I've started thinking about starting things differently. I have a clearer sense now of what I actually want versus what I thought I wanted.

In 2026 I want to focus on myself. Health, independence, figuring out what the next five years actually look like. Not a clean answer yet, just a direction.

2025 is a year I'll always come back to.