2025 is over! Let’s take stock.
Life in Seattle has been relaxed this year. No moving, no crazy life events, and there was no catastrophic PNW earthquake. I did change jobs at the end of the year after feeling like the product I was previously focused on was not leveraging my skills (nor interests) as much as other opportunities I saw available. So far the new job is fast paced, and the people are sharp. The dog had some health problems which thankfully all got sorted. I had an opportunity to travel to some nice places this year, my favorite being Qingdao (awesome city, crazy beer museum 😄).
This year I ran more than ever. Earlier in the year I was consistently running 5Ks every week at least once. After signing up for the Seattle Lake Union 10K, that to one 5K and one 10K per week. I think I was a bit of a weirdo: I almost exclusively ran by myself, and the same two routes every week. I think whether it was raining or not, it was meditative-ish to go on the 10K. Despite the fact I didn’t have an amazing timing at the actual event, on account of it being hot and more hilly than my practice, the energy was great, and I was happy to have done the hard thing. Now in 2026 I’m practicing with a local group to run Vancouver half marathon. Running 10K at this point is not trivial, but it’s not hard. The few times I’ve run like 12K-13K I’ve got the sense that my breathing and heart rate are fine, I just need to build up my ability to absorb impact, which will come with practice. I’m excited to meet that challenge.
Thinking back to 2020, which was probably the first time I ran like a mile or two once or twice a week, I felt super slow and constantly out of breath. Now, I’m still slow (lol), but I understand how to pace myself much better, and I think over time I’ve had enough gradual success that I can see “I can’t do a half marathon today, but I know I will be able to”, which is a great mental place to be in.
2025 was the first year that I had two full Chinese lessons every week for the entire year. I still make a lot of mistakes of course. Because my lessons are almost 90+% just conversation, I feel like my ability to express basic things, my overall ability to automatically speak without formulating too much in my head, etc. all improved. I realized very late in the year how critical memorization tools are for me (i.e. flash cards). I found Fresh Cards, which syncs across my computer/phone and it’s been really an excellent tool.
Often in my classes, I'm the one talking, and I do find that I need more "listening" skills. Both in understanding common speach and words, but also in the special skill of grok'ing 80% of something when things are spoken faster than I have a chance of understanding -- it's an important skill. If you're always in the mode of thinking "I have to understand every word", then you will completely lose a fast speaker, whereas attempting to grasp onto key bits will help you get the main gist which can oftentimes be enough.
Maybe this is super obvious in retrospect, but actually speaking with a real person is hugely beneficial. If I was to try and learn French or something I feel like I would go this same route.
One thing this year I wish I did more of was “publish”. Whether that is commenting on things, posting on a blog, making a video… Sometimes I feel like I’m present in a lot of things but not participating. Often, it’s because I feel what I have to say is obvious, has already said, etc. but the reality is that if I adopt this attitude, it means that I kind of “don’t exist”. I’ve found that when I do put something out there, people want to interact with it, they do learn something, etc. and I love that. I hope in 2026 I can lean more into that feeling and share thoughts/conversations/projects with the world rather than being so cynical that what I have to say is beneath sharing.
Hobbies and other projects continue, but over the last year I have really come to a feeling that I need to make my projects smaller. Grand vision is fun, but it means that delivering a final version of any part requires a lot of thinking. Dragon is a great example: Tremendously big project, I've learned a lot, we've designed compilers, multiple bits of hardware, and on and on. It's a great project, but it's so large and we have not really delivered any single part of it in a complete way, which means it's difficult to share with the world. I think also finishing things is super important mentally; A part of me enjoys that there is always something on the table ready to be worked on some more, but it doesn't need to come at the expense of completing things.
Maybe I'll update this later with more thoughts, but 2025 was a good year 🥂. Progress in running, Chinese, and remaining relevant and excited about my job are the things I would count as big successes in the year. Going into 2026, I want to break down my hobby work into bits small enough to share and discuss with people, and actually hit "share/publish" frequently.