2025 Roundup

2025, a year of change

To say 2025 has been a year of change for me is a huge understatement. I came into 2025 about to change roles at work, a holiday planned, in a band, and trying to get back to running regularly after a couple of lingering bouts of colds/flu. By the end, my life feels like it couldn’t be more different.

This post is going to serve almost like a time capsule. I’ll use this post to look back on in a year, five years, and probably more, as a snapshot of where I was at the end of the first quarter century of the 2000s.

It has taken me a lot longer to write this post. For a while I wanted to include everything that happened this year, then I wanted to just do a few short bullet points. Hopefully I’ve struck a good balance!

Life

As mentioned, life is not what I expected it to be at the beginning of 2025.

In the middle of the year, my wife and I ended our relationship. We are still very amicable, and have become good friends. This bodes well for our future as co-parents. We still live in the same house, but this is going to change in 2026. What this means is that some of the biggest changes are still in the future.

During this, I started therapy. This has been one of the most transformative things I’ve ever done. I have spent a number of years with low-to-no self-confidence, very little value in myself. Any validation of myself came from others (through relationships, friendships, work). This is no longer the case. While I’m still working on myself, I am for the first time in my life starting to feel comfortable with myself as a person, and advocating for myself.

I’ve also established the beginnings of a social life where I live, as well as reconnecting with friends I haven’t seen in years. I’ve also joined a number of fitness-based groups too (mainly running, but others are happening too). In the process of doing so, I’ve realised that I’m not the introvert I thought I was, and actually get recharged by being around people. I may not be a full on extrovert, but I’ve identified myself as an introvert for most of my life. This is another shift which I never expected.

Career

At the start of 2025, I was in the process of changing roles. I had been in the DevOps/Site Reliability Engineering space for close to 7 years (after more than a decade in the Networking industry), and decided to move into Software Engineering.

I’ve never considered myself as a developer, do not have a Computer Science background, and all my coding experience is from solving Networking/Systems/Cloud problems, rather than developing applications. Doing this as my primary role was a big shift.

So, as 2026 starts, how is that working out? I’m going back to my previous role as an SRE. A large part of this is the changes in my life have left me with little capacity to grow as a software engineer. If I had a clear mind, I doubt I would have made this decision. However the responsibility of my position, along with what I would need to work on to get to where I feel I need to be, it just isn’t what I want to do any longer.

It is worth mentioning that in reflection of my career (triggered by a large period of reflection this year), I’ve been in a state of career burnout for close to (if not more than) a decade. I’ve pushed myself too hard, and while I am in a very privileged position to be able to choose where I want to go in my career, it has taken a massive toll on my mental health.

By taking a step “back” (sideways in terms of responsibility, but backwards in terms of progression) to a comfortable place, I can recover from the burn out, and focus on life. I’ll still be productive, I’ll still contribute, but it won’t be as mentally taxing because it’s a field I know really well.

Health and fitness

This year has been a huge change in terms of my health and fitness. I was already making a lot of progress in 2024, but a number of illnesses and injuries delayed a lot of the progress I wanted to make.

This year, I’ve established myself as a runner. I no longer feel like someone who is trying to start running. I’ve started to hit respectable 5k and 10k times, I’m considering joining races, and I’m part of running clubs. Also, I’ve ran in 4 countries outside of the UK this year (Fuerteventura, France, Netherlands, Sweden), as well as 3 other cities in the UK that aren’t where I live (Sheffield, Birmingham and London). The thing I’m most excited for when visiting a new place or country is where I get to run.

In terms of weight and diet, I’ve started to get control on my eating more. It isn’t perfect, and I go through periods of time where it gets worse. However my “worst” days now are equal to what I used to refer to as a “good” day. My weight has gone from around 95-96kg at the end of 2024, to 86-87kg at the end of 2025. Bear in mind I was already running in 2024, so this is definitely not due to that! To be brutally honest with myself, a big chunk of this was lost because of stress (see the Life section), but I’ve managed to maintain this level since.

At the very end of 2025, I started to go bouldering again (for the first time consistently since 2014), and I’m also intending on cycling more, more weight training and Zwift in 2026, so I expect this section will be different again by the end of 2026.

Music

At the beginning of 2025, I was in a band, but playing music someone else had written. It was fun, but the music never entirely clicked for me. I left this band in March.

By the end of 2025, I’ve started to form a new band. I have another guitarist involved, and we’re talking to other people to get involved too. So far, this is with music I’ve written (although it isn’t the intention for me to be the only writer, I just have a lot of material ready to go), so from a personal perspective it is very fulfilling.

By the end of 2026, I’m hoping that we will have found all the other members, regularly rehearse and are starting to consider playing live.

Personal Care

I mentioned in the Life section how I had never placed any value on myself, and required external validation to feel good about myself. This has changed, and in the process I’ve started to take more care of myself physically as well as mentally.

I won’t go into huge detail, so to summarise I now have a skincare routine, I take care of my (stupidly long) hair properly, I’ve started purchasing fragrances, and I’m putting a lot of time and effort into what I wear and how good I feel in it. For the first time in my life, these aren’t a reaction to a current/potential partner, they are for me. It feels good to feel good!

I’m also journaling, I’m being more forthright about what I want in life and my career, and I’m taking more of an interest in what I want my next house to look like, how it’s decorated and everything else.

Me from a year ago would be a bit confused by what they are seeing, me from 10 years ago wouldn’t recognise any of this.

Travel

I’ve covered this a little already, but this year I’ve been to four different countries, including going by myself to two of them (something I’d never done before). I’ve visited a lot of places in the UK too.

Given a lot of what will happen in 2026, I doubt I will visit as many different countries this year, but I intend to travel a lot more on my own in the future.

Conclusion

So, 2025, the year I could not have predicted. I’m at the point of not recognising the person I was a year ago. What will 2026 bring? Who knows, all I know is I shouldn’t be surprised if it doesn’t go the way I expect!