Reflections on 2025: A Year of Growth, Change, and New Beginnings
A Year Like No Other
As 2025 draws to a close, I find myself sitting quietly, reflecting on what has undoubtedly been the most transformative year of my life. There’s something profound about the end of a year – a natural pause that invites introspection, gratitude, and forward-thinking. From profound personal milestones to significant career changes and entrepreneurial ventures, this year has been a journey of growth, learning, and new beginnings that I never could have fully anticipated when I welcomed it twelve months ago.
Looking back, I’m struck by how much can change in just 365 days. The person I was in January feels both familiar and distant – still me, but shaped by experiences that have added new dimensions to my understanding of life, work, and what truly matters. This reflection isn’t just an exercise in nostalgia; it’s an attempt to distill the lessons of a remarkable year and carry them forward into whatever comes next.
Personal Milestones: Family First
The most significant moments of 2025 weren’t found in boardrooms or code repositories – they happened at home. This year, my son was born, and I married my wife. These two events have fundamentally reshaped my perspective on everything. Writing those words still fills me with a sense of wonder and profound gratitude.
Becoming a father has been the most humbling experience of my life. There’s nothing quite like holding your child for the first time – that moment when the abstract concept of “parenthood” suddenly becomes overwhelmingly real. Every sleepless night, every small milestone, every moment of pure joy watching my son discover the world has reinforced something I intellectually knew but now feel deeply: there are things in life far more important than any professional achievement.
Fatherhood has taught me patience in ways I didn’t know I needed to learn. It has taught me presence – the art of being fully in the moment rather than mentally drafting tomorrow’s to-do list. It has taught me that love isn’t just an emotion; it’s a commitment, a daily choice, an action verb that requires showing up even when you’re exhausted.
Marrying my wife was the natural culmination of a journey we’ve been on together, but the ceremony itself was more meaningful than I anticipated. There’s something powerful about making public vows, about standing before the people you love and declaring your commitment. Our wedding wasn’t just a celebration; it was a statement of intent, a shared promise about the kind of life we want to build together.
These milestones remind me that while careers and projects are important, the relationships we build and the family we nurture are what truly define a meaningful life. When I’m old and looking back on my years, I won’t remember the specific features I shipped or the meetings I attended. I’ll remember the moments with my family – the laughter, the challenges overcome together, the quiet evenings that seemed ordinary but were actually extraordinary in their simplicity.
Professional Transitions: From Delivery to New Horizons
On the professional front, 2025 marked a significant chapter in my career journey. At my former employer, I was responsible for the end-to-end delivery of a critical platform – a culmination of years of work, collaboration, and dedication. This wasn’t just a technical achievement; it was a lesson in leadership, stakeholder management, and the art of bringing complex projects to completion.
Successfully delivering that platform taught me invaluable lessons about what it takes to see something through from inception to deployment. It required navigating organizational complexities, managing diverse teams, making difficult trade-offs, and maintaining momentum even when obstacles seemed insurmountable. The satisfaction of seeing that platform go live was immense, but equally valuable was the growth I experienced throughout the process.
But as one chapter closed, another opened. Change was on the horizon, and I embraced it fully. I embarked on a new career journey at Marex, where I now hold responsibility for Global Payments software development. This transition wasn’t just a job change – it was an opportunity to apply everything I’ve learned while tackling new challenges at a global scale.
The move to Marex represented a deliberate choice to push myself outside my comfort zone. After years of building expertise in one domain, I chose to take on a role with broader scope, greater complexity, and higher stakes. Global payments is a fascinating space – it sits at the intersection of technology, finance, regulation, and international commerce. Every day brings new challenges that require both technical depth and strategic thinking.
Building a next-generation global payments platform has been both challenging and exhilarating, pushing me to grow in ways I hadn’t anticipated. The complexity of handling payments across multiple currencies, jurisdictions, and regulatory frameworks has deepened my appreciation for systems thinking. I’ve learned that in this domain, the details matter enormously – a small oversight can have significant consequences, while thoughtful design decisions can create lasting value.
Beyond the technical challenges, this role has expanded my leadership capabilities. Managing globally distributed teams requires a different set of skills than leading co-located groups. It demands clarity in communication, trust in your team members, and the ability to build culture across time zones and cultures. These are skills I’m still developing, and I approach each day as an opportunity to learn.
Entrepreneurial Spirit: Building, Launching, and Sunsetting
Beyond my role at Marex, my entrepreneurial spirit remained very much alive throughout 2025. This year, I released two products – a testament to my passion for building solutions that solve real problems. The entrepreneurial drive has always been part of who I am, and I’ve learned that it needs nurturing regardless of how demanding my day job becomes.
Building products on the side isn’t easy. It requires discipline, time management, and the ability to context-switch between different mental modes. But it also brings unique rewards: the freedom to experiment without corporate constraints, the direct feedback loop with users, and the satisfaction of bringing your own vision to life.
However, one of those products has already been sunset due to lack of demand. The market spoke, and the message was clear: this particular solution, despite its technical merits, wasn’t solving a problem that enough people cared about.
And you know what? That’s perfectly fine.
In retrospect, I genuinely enjoyed the journey of building these solutions. The process of ideation, development, and launch is where the real magic happens. The late nights debugging issues, the excitement of deploying new features, the nervous anticipation of user feedback – these experiences are valuable regardless of commercial outcomes.
Not every product will find its market, but every product teaches you something valuable. The lessons learned from a sunset product are often more profound than those from a successful one. Failure – if we can even call it that – forces reflection. It demands that you examine your assumptions, evaluate your process, and emerge with sharper instincts for the next venture.
From this particular sunset, I learned important lessons about market validation, the importance of early user feedback, and the danger of falling in love with solutions before fully understanding the problem. These lessons will inform my future endeavors and increase the probability of success next time around.
Closing a Chapter: weclapp Plugins
Speaking of endings, I’m currently building the sunset solution for my “weclapp Plugins” platform. I built the initial platform in 2017 and 2018, continuously extending it until 2023, and it’s now in maintenance mode while still serving more than 100 corporates to this day. It was born from a genuine need, grew to serve real users, and continues to generate value for those who rely on it. However, it has reached a point where it’s no longer as maintainable and scalable as I need it to be.
The technical decisions that made sense back in 2017 have aged in ways that create friction today. The codebase, while functional, would require significant refactoring to support the kind of features and reliability standards I now consider essential. Sometimes the right decision isn’t to renovate – it’s to acknowledge that a building has served its purpose and gracefully retire it.
Saying goodbye to something you’ve built is never easy. There’s an emotional attachment that develops over years of nurturing a product, responding to user feedback, and seeing it solve real problems. But letting go is a necessary part of growth. Holding onto legacy projects out of sentimentality drains energy that could be directed toward new opportunities with greater potential.
The process of sunsetting a product also teaches valuable lessons. It requires clear communication with users who have come to depend on your solution. It demands thoughtful planning to ensure minimal disruption. And it forces you to confront the reality that nothing we build lasts forever – a humbling reminder that keeps entrepreneurial hubris in check.
Sometimes, the best thing you can do for yourself and your users is to gracefully wind down a product and redirect your energy toward new opportunities. The weclapp Plugins platform will always hold a special place in my history as a builder, but its time has passed.
Looking Forward to 2026
As I look ahead to 2026, my goals extend far beyond the professional realm. First and foremost, I want to continue learning how to be a better person, a better husband, a better dad, and a better human being. These aren’t goals with clear metrics or completion criteria – they’re ongoing commitments to growth that will define my journey for years to come.
Being a better husband means showing up consistently, communicating openly, and never taking my partner for granted. It means finding ways to support her dreams while building our shared life together. Being a better dad means being present, patient, and intentional about the values I model for my son. Personal growth isn’t a destination – it’s a continuous journey that requires daily attention and regular course correction.
On the professional side, I’m genuinely excited about what 2026 holds. At Marex, we’re approaching the release of our new payments platform – a project that represents months of dedicated work, collaboration, and innovation. Seeing this platform go live will be a significant milestone, but the real satisfaction will come from watching it deliver value to users and knowing that our team built something meaningful together.
Additionally, I’m looking forward to releasing two new products personally, independent of my work at Marex. The ideas are already taking shape, informed by lessons learned from this year’s successes and failures. I approach these ventures with realistic expectations – not every product will succeed, but every attempt will teach me something valuable. The entrepreneurial fire continues to burn, and I intend to keep feeding it.
Embracing Uncertainty: The Real Lesson of 2025
Of course, not everything went as planned this year. Projects faced unexpected challenges, timelines shifted, and some ideas didn’t pan out as anticipated. Relationships required more attention than I’d budgeted for. Personal goals were sometimes sacrificed for professional demands, and vice versa. The neat plans I made in January looked nothing like the reality that unfolded.
But this is life. This is what it means to be human in a complex, unpredictable world.
The most important lesson I’ve learned in 2025 is that the ability to react and adjust based on changes is far more important than the initial plan. Plans are merely starting points – they give us direction but shouldn’t become prisons. They’re hypotheses about how the future will unfold, and like all hypotheses, they need to be tested against reality and updated accordingly.
The real skill lies in adaptability: recognizing when circumstances have changed, accepting that reality without excessive attachment to what you thought would happen, and pivoting accordingly. This doesn’t mean abandoning goals at the first sign of difficulty – it means having the wisdom to distinguish between obstacles that require persistence and situations that demand a change in approach.
Rigid adherence to plans in the face of new information isn’t discipline – it’s stubbornness. True resilience is found in flexibility, in the willingness to let go of what you thought would happen and embrace what is actually happening. The most successful people I know aren’t those with the best initial plans; they’re those who adapt most effectively when plans inevitably meet reality.
This year taught me to hold plans loosely while holding goals tightly. The destination matters, but there are usually multiple paths to get there. When one path becomes blocked, expending all your energy trying to force through the obstacle is often less effective than finding an alternative route.
Final Thoughts
2025 has been a year of profound personal and professional growth. It brought new life into the world, formalized a commitment of love, presented career challenges that stretched my capabilities, offered entrepreneurial lessons about success and failure, and provided countless opportunities for reflection on what truly matters.
I’m grateful for all of it – the highs that reminded me what’s possible, and the lows that taught me resilience. I’m grateful for the people who supported me, challenged me, and believed in me. I’m grateful for the opportunity to build, create, and contribute, even when the outcomes weren’t what I hoped for.
I’m especially grateful for the mentors I’ve been fortunate to have in my life. These individuals – some of whom I’ve worked with directly, others who have guided me from afar – have shaped my thinking, challenged my assumptions, and helped me become the person I am today. Their wisdom, patience, and willingness to invest time in my growth have been invaluable gifts that I can never fully repay.
I want to specifically call out Thomas – a mentor, but more importantly, a friend, and now the godfather of my son. Even though he embarked on a new position in Abu Dhabi this year, distance hasn’t diminished his impact on my life. He continues to challenge my thoughts, question my decisions, and share his experience to help me become a better human being. True mentorship transcends geography – it’s about the commitment to another person’s growth, regardless of time zones or miles between you. But what I value most is our friendship, which has only grown stronger over time. Thomas, thank you for everything.
I also want to call out George, from whom I’ve learned the most on a technical perspective. His depth of knowledge, his approach to problem-solving, and his willingness to share insights have shaped how I think about technology and engineering. Even though we no longer work for the same employer, we continue to learn from each other and learn together. What started as a professional relationship has evolved into something much deeper – a genuine friendship that I treasure. That’s the beauty of meaningful connections – they transcend their origins and grow into something more profound. George, thank you for pushing me to be a better engineer and for being the friend you’ve become.
But perhaps even more fulfilling has been the opportunity to mentor others. Some of the people I’ve had the privilege to guide have become close friends – relationships that transcend the traditional mentor-mentee dynamic. There’s a unique joy in watching someone you’ve invested in grow, succeed, and eventually surpass expectations. The feeling of knowing you played even a small role in changing someone’s life trajectory is profoundly rewarding. It’s a reminder that our impact on the world isn’t measured solely by what we build or achieve ourselves, but by how we lift others along the way.
As I step into 2026, I carry with me the lessons of this year: cherish your family above all else, embrace change as an opportunity rather than a threat, build with passion regardless of outcomes, and always remain adaptable in the face of an unpredictable world. These aren’t just platitudes – they’re hard-won insights that I intend to practice daily.
The year ahead is uncertain, as all years are. There will be plans and pivots, successes and setbacks, moments of clarity and periods of confusion. But I enter 2026 with confidence – not because I know what will happen, but because I trust my ability to respond to whatever comes.
Here’s to the journey ahead – with all its plans, pivots, and beautiful surprises. Here’s to growth, to family, to meaningful work, and to the courage to keep building even when the path isn’t clear. And here’s to you, the reader, as you navigate your own journey through this complex, challenging, wonderful life.
Thank you for being part of my 2025. I look forward to sharing what 2026 brings.