One of my favorite memories this year is simple: morning coffee on a cruise in Ha Long Bay. Just sitting there, half-awake, looking at the water and thinking, the world is big.
I try to give every year a theme. Not in a "new year new me" way. More like a direction.
- 2024: Love + commitment (wedding, honeymoon).
- 2025: Widen the map (travel, new hobbies, curiosity).
And it worked. But something else happened that I didn't plan for: I found community. A group of devs that became real friends. More on that later.
If I could tell January-me one thing, it'd be: learn to protect your time.
(Everything good this year came with a scheduling cost.)
Trips that changed me
Vietnam with my wife
There were a lot of moments: coffee six inches from a train on Train Street in Hanoi, coffee floating in an actual pond at Oasis Cafe in Saigon, coffee on a cruise in Ha Long Bay. The best kind of chaos.
The Oasis Cafe one still gets me, you're literally sitting in a pond surrounded by coffee plants while you drink your coffee. It's absurd and beautiful and somehow makes perfect sense in Vietnam.
But the biggest moment was visiting my family for the first time in 27 years.
That hit me way harder than I expected. Being there felt like getting context I didn't know I was missing.
My mom has 7 siblings. Only the 2 sisters were able to immigrate to the US. The boys stayed behind. I grew up knowing this fact, but I didn't really know it until I was sitting at a table with all of them, watching them laugh and talk in a way that felt both foreign and deeply familiar.
Here's the thing that got me. I could very well be them. Or they could very well be me. Same blood, different luck. Two of my aunts were able to leave. The rest stayed. And I'm sitting there, 27 years later, trying to figure out what that means about who I am.
Some parts of me are because I grew up in America. Some parts are just me. If I had been born there instead of here, maybe I'd still be building apps. Or maybe I'd be running a coffee shop in Saigon, or teaching, or doing something completely different. Not better or worse. Just different. Most of who we are is circumstance.
Also, the part that messed with me (in a good way) was the smell.
Something about the humidity, the concrete, the faint gas-from-cars vibe. It honestly put me back in 1998. Not in a sad way. Just instant memory. Like my brain remembered before I did.
We packed four regions into two weeks, and it was both exhausting and perfect.
Las Vegas for our 1-year anniversary
Our first wedding anniversary. We wanted to do something just for us. No work, no projects, just celebrating where we are.
And we packed it. The Sphere to see The Wizard of Oz (unreal). Area 51, which I promised her years ago. Dinner at the top of the Eiffel Tower. Bruno Mars live. The food was incredible. The whole trip felt like a checkpoint: one year in, and we're doing this thing right.
Sometimes you need a trip that's just about the two of you. This was that.
Code Your Commit, Texas (the internet becoming real life)
This was a highlight for a reason I didn't predict: community.
This year I got really close with a private group of devs called LGT (Let's Get Technical). We talk almost every day: hanging out, celebrating wins, keeping each other accountable, occasional career advice. Nobody takes themselves too seriously, and everyone's a comedian. It's tight-knit in a way I haven't felt since high school.
Meeting them in person at CYC was different, in the best way. A bunch of small conversations added up to one big feeling: I found my people.
Mexico, first time leaving the country
We went for my friend's wedding. Someone I've known since high school.
The trip itself was pretty chill: resort beers every night, catching up on years of life. But the "first international trip" part hit differently than I expected. Not in a profound way. More like... logistics. Watching what we ate, figuring out small things together, being a little out of our comfort zone. It forced my wife and me to be on the same page in a way that felt new.
Not life-changing. But a good kind of uncomfortable.
Honorable mentions
- Boston for work. Traveling for work was genuinely nice.
- Seattle for my wife's family. Simple, grounding, good.
Things I shipped (aka: the part of my brain that needs to build)
I shipped more than this, but these were my favorites:
Corgi Quest
I built this for my 5-year-old corgi, Bumi.
He was once really good, and honestly, I failed him by not keeping up with training and activity. So I wanted to build something that makes dog training feel motivating again. Like a game you can stick with.
I shipped it later in the year and entered it into a hackathon. Solo, against about 100 other teams. We won. $2k in cash plus over $100k in Netlify and Cloudflare credits, which honestly helps since hosting isn't free. Planning to use those credits to cover Corgi Quest's costs through 2026.
And yeah, in 2026 I want to take this seriously. Startup-level serious.
I built it because I needed a system that makes training stick.
Halloween costume contest app (real-time voting)
I threw a ~60 person Halloween party and built a live voting app for the costume contest.
It broke live, and I had to debug it in real time with a few drinks in me. The guests loved it, which is honestly the best outcome for a project like that.
I built it because I love turning real life into a live product.
Elfgorithm
Hackathon project in January with friends from LGT. We won. Great way to start the year.
This was the hackathon that pulled me deeper into the LGT community. I'd been in the Discord for a while but never really engaged. Elfgorithm changed that. I made friends along the way, and it stuck.
I built it because hackathons became my favorite kind of pressure.
DSD Cohort, leading a team
I volunteered to lead a team in a 6-week cohort program. Six teams, six weeks, build something from zero. We built a home services app using voice AI and won best project.
But the real win wasn't the project. It was learning how to lead.
Everyone on the team had different motivations. Some wanted to build confidence. Some wanted to go deeper technically. The job wasn't to push everyone the same way. It was to figure out what each person needed and meet them there. Be human. Let them know you're in their corner.
I didn't expect to learn this much about leadership from a side project. But here we are.
The real highlights of 2025
If I boil the year down:
- I fell in love with hackathons and won 3 of them (plus one mentoring-style "win" that felt just as good).
- I found a friend group I actually feel attached to. The LGT crew. Didn't see that coming.
- I hosted my biggest party ever and somehow survived two months of decorating.
- I traveled, and it made me more grateful and more curious about the world.
What I learned (the honest version)
- I'm happiest when I'm building things and shipping them.
- The right community makes you want to level up.
- Time is the real constraint. The hard part this year was juggling it all and learning to say no.
- I'm trying to keep my wife at the top. Always.
And seriously, shoutout to my wife for supporting me and my ambitions, even when my brain is in project mode.
2026 theme
I already know the theme for 2026:
Be ready.
This is a little cryptic but all i can share is I want less chaos, more systems. Protect time, eat clean, train Bumi, build what matters.
A big part of that is Bumi. I want him to be overall more obedient, and I want to put real time into training so he's better around people and other dogs.
More intentional, less scattered.