# 2025 in Review


_Previously: ~~2024~~, ~~2023~~, [2022](/blog/2022/12/31/2022-in-Review/),
[2021](/blog/2021/12/31/2021-in-Review/),
[2020](/blog/2020/12/30/2020-in-Review/),
[2019](/blog/2019/12/31/2019-in-Review/),
[2018](/blog/2018/12/31/2018-in-Review/),
[2017](/blog/2017/12/31/2017-in-Review/)_

A surprisingly persistent personality quirk I have is that I care a lot about
the changeover of the new year. I quite like consuming yearly predictions,
year-in-reviews, and so on, and use the calendar transition as a time for
reflection.

## Work

I’ve now been at [Databricks](https://databricks.com) for a little over 3.5
years, and it’s been quite a fun ride. In most ways, it’s exceeded my
expectations from when I joined. I'll hopefully have more to say publicly soon
about the work I've been doing. I've had an opportunity to write something that
should become public in the coming weeks, but it hasn't landed yet.

Organizationally, I’ve stayed on the same team for my entire tenure at the
company, but things move so quickly and have evolved in such a way that I’ve
never felt like I’ve been standing still. I’ve leaned more into TL-ing this
year, which is an unending but enjoyable game of plate spinning. I was also
promoted to Staff Engineer early in 2025, which was a really welcome vote of
confidence.

I’m learning that, while I find myself gravitating to working on
[developer tooling](/blog/2025/04/08/Why-Developer-Tools/), the underlying area
that I enjoy is _infrastructure_ defined broadly. I get a lot of satisfaction
about keeping things running and raising the waterline for stability.

As a side work project, I spent some time this year working internally on AI
devtools, which was quite fun. That space changed a _ton_ over the course of the
year, to the point where the things that I was pushing for in December 2024 are
basically obsolete. I’ve written a bunch about this recently, so won’t go into
detail here. My primary takeaway and piece of advice from the progress this year
is: use the new tools. Be an early adopter and get an intuitive sense for what’s
coming.

## Writing

This post is the final in my daily writing experiment for December. While I’m
glad it’s now complete, I found it to be a really useful exercise. I didn’t
enjoy writing _every_ day, but at least 60% of the posts felt generative and
like I got something out of having written. I’d say I’m happy with having
written at least 80% of them, which feels like a good hit rate.

The downside of the daily writing month is that I exhausted many of my “low
hanging fruit” writing ideas. This was one of the implicit goals: to do a winter
cleaning of all the ideas rattling around in my brain to make space for new
ones. I look forward to writing more in 2026, but at a more sustainable cadence.

## Favorite Media of 2025

-   **Books:** See
    [Favorite Books of 2023-2025](/blog/2025/12/25/My-Favorite-Books-of-2023-2025/)
-   **Music:** See
    [Favorite Music of 2025](/blog/2025/12/19/My-Favorite-Music-of-2025/)
-   **Movies:** Didn’t really watch any 🤷‍♂️
-   **TV:** The best show I watched all year, by far, was
    _[The Americans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Americans)_.
-   **Blogs**:
    -   [Zvi Mowshowitz](https://thezvi.substack.com/) continues to write an
        excellent, extremely comprehensive blog on AI and related topics.
    -   [Cate Hall](https://usefulfictions.substack.com/)’s Substack has a
        shockingly high hit rate for interesting ideas related to agency and
        self-betterment.
    -   I continue to enjoy reading
        [Tom Macwright’s](https://macwright.com/writing) blog. He’s currently
        working on [Val.town](https://www.val.town/).

## Running

Per Strava, I ran 1,311 miles across 207 activities in 2025. I PR’d my marathon
distance (3:24:40), PR’d my 10k distance at the Lake Union 10k (41:32), and PR’d
my 5k distance (19:57) with my first ever sub-20-minute run. So, a pretty good
year for running! Running wasn’t my primary focus this year in the same way it
has been in years past. But I continued to lean on it for a source of routine
and mental clarity. It appears that paid off in the stats.

## 2026

I have rather high uncertainty for what 2026 is going to bring, but in an
exciting, generative way. 2025 was a difficult year personally in some ways, but
many paths seem open now in a way that they didn’t at the beginning of the year.
There is much yet to be done. A couple concrete events I’m looking forward to:
embarking on my first silent meditation retreat (after having noncommittally
considered doing one for several years), and running my first trail race in
January.

Happy New Year! (And a special thanks for those who followed along with my
writing throughout December!)

_Cover Image: Boeing 737 taxing at Boeing Field, Seattle, WA_