2025: A year in retrospective

2025 was a great year for me. I entered the year with zero resolutions and only vowed to play it as it came. During the Christmas and New Year’s Eve holidays, as I sit down and reflect, I am grateful for all the wonderful experiences I had in 2025.

Here’s a recap of the things 2025 had in store for me.

TL;DR

• Celebrated 15th wedding anniversary
• Climbed the highest mountain in Germany with wife and daughter
• Ran a half-marathon and several 10Ks
• Connected with my roots, visited my ancestral lands
• Hit the top of Hacker News
• Became an uncle (again)
• Had fun at weddings, traveled far and wide, met old friends
• Built a team with fresh energy, had fun at conferences, participated in panel discussions

Physical Challenges & Personal Discipline

2025 was a great year for my fitness goals. My year began with a 5K run at the Brandenburger Tor and that set the momentum for the rest of the year. By spring, I’d completed my first half-marathon that proved less about speed than about showing up consistently.

I love to hit the trails during work trips. London’s famous trail from County Hall to Hyde Park winds past monuments that look glorious at dawn when the city is still waking up. 10K run on that track is one of the things I eagerly look for. Lisbon gave me a similar gift, a leisurely 10K from Avenida da Liberdade to Parque Monsanto and back. The view of the city spreading below felt like a postcard.

Soon the treks in the wild came too. Schwarzwald, Titisee, Mt. Feldberg. The Ravenna Gorge. But nothing compared to Zugspitze.

Germany’s highest peak sits at 2,962 meters, and the 22-kilometer approach via Reintal valley doesn’t forgive casual ambition. My wife, our 11-year-old daughter, and I started before sunrise and trekked 16 kilometers to the Reintalangerhutte to camp for the night. We rose early the next morning and took the steep path to Knorrhutte while marveling the wonders the Alps was showing us. After a hard trek on a vertical cliff, a trail full of scree and fickle weather, we managed to reach the summit by lunch time. We made friends along the trail, shared experiences and made this trek truly memorable.

Travel as a way to connect

The year took me to places I’d never imagined visiting and back to cities I thought I knew.

It started with a workcation in Lisbon where work and vacation blurred beautifully. I stood at Cabo da Roca, the westernmost point of mainland Europe, where the Atlantic meets the edge of everything. At Nazaré, I watched the death defying dance of surfers on 20-meter waves that crash with a violence and ferocity that’s unmatched.

Then came the Black Forest and Alsace during Easter. This trip defied easy description. One day we were deep in German wilderness, the next soaking in spa towns after difficult hikes. We stumbled upon châteaux in rural France that felt forgotten by time and visited the EU Parliament, a symbol of unity and progress. Colmar’s half-timbered houses looked like plucked out of fairy tales.

London appeared on my calendar multiple times for work, which I never mind. On one bright evening, I wandered the north bank with no agenda. I managed to visit the British Museum and see the Benin bronzes. But the cherry on top is always meeting old college friends. There’s something about friendships that survive years and distance, picking up conversations as if no time has passed at all.

Fifteen years of marriage deserved more than a dinner reservation. While our daughter was away on a school trip, my wife and I escaped to Liepnitzsee. No itinerary. No obligations. Just long walks along the turquise lake and the luxury of each other’s undivided attention. We followed this with a family trip to Dziwnów, Poland, a charming spa resort where the Baltic Sea meets endless blue skies. Those quaint beaches hold a particular kind of peace.

October belonged to my daughter and me. Santorini became our shared adventure, just the two of us roaming aimlessly, lounging in jacuzzis, reading side by side, watching movies, feasting on seafood. Father-daughter bonding doesn’t always need grand gestures. Sometimes it’s just being present together in a beautiful place.

Connecting to the roots

Every year we make the pilgrimage “Wari” to the Vitthal Temple in Kirchheim. Walking the parikrama, chanting bhajans with hundreds of others, you feel connected to something larger than yourself. This is the salt-of-the-earth Bhakti movement my ancestors practiced, and for those hours, I understand why they held these values sacred. The Earth beneath your feet, the rhythm of the chants, the simplicity of devotion—it strips away complexity.

My visit to Akola, my hometown, coincided with Ganesh festival. My brother and nephew joined me for a road trip from Pune through rural India, the kind of journey where the roads narrow and the countryside opens up. We met extended family I hadn’t seen in years, old friends whose faces showed the passage of time, and traveled to our ancestral farmlands where my family’s story began.

The real gift came at the temple fortress my grandfather helped build. My uncles told stories of his work in the freedom movement, and my daughter listened with rapt attention. She was hearing her great-grandfather’s legacy firsthand, understanding where she comes from. That’s the kind of inheritance you can’t leave in a will.

Work that matters

Professionally, 2025 surprised me with its momentum. Building a new team from the ground up turned out to be one of the year’s genuine pleasures. I watched talented people find their rhythm together, and set wheels in motion for developments that won’t fully materialize until next year. The hands-on software architecture work reminded me why I fell in love with this field in the first place. Like everyone else, the dive into LLMs changed the way I work and write software.

One side project, something I built for fun, expecting maybe a few dozen people to notice—accidentally hit the top of Hacker News. There’s something surreal about watching strangers dissect your “silly side gig” in real time, debating its merits and flaws with an intensity you never anticipated.

WeAreDevelopers and LeadDev Berlin brought me face-to-face with customers at the Cloudflare booth. How the customers use your products is always a fascinating discovery. I also joined a panel discussion on learning from failures, which felt appropriately meta given how many failures preceded any success worth mentioning.

Exanding the mind

2025 led me through books in four languages, each leading me into their unique worlds.

I finally read The Count of Monte Cristo and understood why it endures. Traumnovelle revealed Schnitzler’s psychological precision. Shōgun consumed entire weekends. Non-fiction books like The Halo Effect and The Manager’s Path shifted how I think about leadership. Project Hail Mary and the Bobiverse series reminded me that great sci-fi makes you laugh and think in equal measure.

But the real treasure came from my aunt: a set of rare history books she reprinted. These books, about the history of the ancient region of Vidarbha, were written in 1930s and have a timeless quality in them.

A year is too big to truly summarize. But it leaves behind moments that quietly stay with you: a daughter’s face at a summit, a grandfather’s story passing to the next generation, a side project finding its audience, a marriage deepening into its sixteenth year.

Here’s to more years that unfold rather than conform. Here’s to playing it as it comes.