My 2025 Review
To everyone who reads this, a happy new year 2026! 🚀
I left 2025 satisfied and happy among my loved ones. We gathered at my home with some friends and their kids. It was a nice evening. While waking up, I started to write these words, I initially planned to write them before leaving 2025. But this time I will publish my review. For 2024, I’ve started the post but never finished it.
While reading the never published post of 2024, I realized that 2025 was good and not as bumpy of a ride as 2024. 2024 had many ups and downs. And I can say personally and as a family, we settled somehow.
2025 started with finishing #100DaysToOffload at the end of January. Finishing the challenge made me proud. Because I never really finished something similar on the web. All I started, was abandoned after some time.
Most of the spring and summer were not present for me, writing wise. I had numerous freelance projects and focused a lot on family and non-IT related stuff at home. In consequence, I did not write a lot. I’ve started the #TheMonthProject to push me to get my #pelletyze app done. I had a lot of fun writing these posts. But because of spring and summer, I released it quite late in October 2025. But this was marked as a huge achievement for me. I worked a lot on #pelletyze and I’m happy that it is now in a presentable state. :) Since the release, I did some small updates but never did marketing for the site to reach a user base. Because I still have some features and small improvements I want to implement before bringing it to a wider audience.
In spring, I tried Cursor and made a subscription. I wanted to see what AI hype is all about and how it works out. For a year I was already a Copilot/Supermaven user and had a small glimpse of what AI can do. For me it was quite a learning curve, because I needed to find my flow. After I found it, I tried Claude Code and never looked back. 😅 I still have a Cursor subscription, because I’ve subscribed for a year, like I did with Copilot and Supermaven. Which was not a mistake, but in a year a lot can happen. Especially in the tech and AI space. So for the future, I know that I just try things out on a monthly basis. My most used AI tools now are ChatGPT and Claude Code. Maybe I should also write about my usage of them in another post. To end the paragraph, I can say that in 2025 AI had a huge impact on how I work now, and it improved a lot for me.
In the summer I made an old friend after over 10 years. We split in a not so friendly way and never talked it out, so I never knew in which state we were. But I tried to take all the courage and wrote him a message with what I feel about us. The good thing, no one was mad, and we’ve met and talked for some hours. :)
Over the summer, we made a hard decision. Our oldest was on the path to start school. But we decided to let him go to the kindergarten one more year. He is now with his brother in a new kindergarten. The hardest part is not the new location or that he is not in school; for him, the hardest thing was leaving his friends. Which is something we had in mind but never thought that it would have such an impact on a little boy. Socially it is hard for him. But we hope that eventually, it is better for him. Since he got six on his school enrollment. He was not thoroughly ready for it. In 2026, we then have his school enrollment, and I hope that it improves everything for him, because he can then see his old friends again daily.
On December I’ve started my #AdventOfProgress event. Last year I did #AdventOfCode and #AdventOfTypescript and while it was fun, it cost me a lot of time, I could have spent on something better. And this year, I wanted to spend the time on something with a real outcome. So I developed a React Native app in December. It was a lot of fun, and I had a prototype, which was planned to be done in the spring of 2025. 😅 But this is not relevant. I completed something again in 2025, and this is important. I now need to tweak some things and complete the landing page so I have a releasable app. The prototype is installed on iOS and Android on the phones of some friends, and this is a wonderful feeling. They can provide feedback, and I have a small audience right from the start. :)
Over the December break, I also finished most of our basement, especially the playroom for the kids. I’ve added a swing, a therapy swing. We know this type of swing from the occupational therapy for the little one. The boys and all the other kids who visited us over the last few days, had a lot of fun with it. I also added wall bars, so the kids can climb and “hang” around. Finishing this project, gave me a huge relief and gave me a feeling of being free. Sounds strange, but this project was now in the works for some years. Which was not my fault. Mostly. Progress here, had depend on some external people.
So the 24.12. Marked a point where I could check some points on my to-do list as done. So I could start some new things, which were waiting for some time now. In this case, starting to set up a home lab. I used an old notebook to install Proxmox, Forgejo, and Vaultwarden. I can now self-host my Git projects in my local environment and access them via VPN from the outside. Setting up Proxmox with a good backup strategy, gives me a foundation I can build upon in the future. I plan to extend this all with Home Assistant and other tools that will improve my life. :)
All this sums up 2025 quite well. It was a good year. And I look forward to what 2026 will give me and my family. 😎
83 of #100DaysToOffload
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