11:18 AM
i’ve stopped using the moka pot for a while. not because i don’t like it anymore - i just haven’t found coffee that deserves the ceremony (yet).
if 2024 was a fast year, 2025 was a rocket year. it didn’t feel like a story, more like a deployment that never stopped. day by day, month by month, and suddenly: year over.
weirdly i feel free this year.
it's reminding me of what ngọt said in Mèo Hoang:
"nhìn thời gian trôi,
mà không tiếc nuối
là người tự do.
translate:
"watching time pass,
without regret,
is to be free.
i’m sitting in my room now, collecting thoughts and writing them down in a fragile way.
//routine / building
i read fewer books this year. like ... shameful amount.
but on the plus sign, i shipped more than i expected to
life loop stayed the same:
"Work - Love - Exercise - Eat - Sleep
some people would call that boring. i call it stable infra. i think i like it because i like what i’m building.
also: routine isn’t a lack of ambition. it’s me reducing randomness so my brain can actually ship.
//planning vs flow
i’m still scared of having a “plan” for my life.
days/weeks: ok.
a month: cool.
years: hmm not sure.
i guess i don't like signing a contract with a version of me that hasn’t existed (yet).
i love how life keeps leading me into paths i didn’t predict. and honestly, strict long-term plans often feel like fake certainty. fake certainty is how you make dumb decisions confidently.
rule i’m trying to live by:
- plan enough to move
- don’t plan so much you stop noticing reality
//growth (mental > physical)
if 2024 was physical changes (apartment, space, health, etc.), 2025 was mental changes. less visible, more permanent.
did i succeed this year? yeah, i think so.
wins:
- got promoted
- decent job, good pay
- got to touch things i didn’t imagine would be my life this early: AI, crypto, leading a team, owning a big codebase with hundreds of thousands of users
the real “level up” wasn’t the release. it was after - when the product grew and incidents started showing up like surprise exams.
i learned how to keep things stable under pressure:
- handle incidents without panicking
- scale horizontally when needed
- stop guessing and start asking: where’s the evidence?
real and concrete evidence became the only religion that matters during an incident. because vibes don’t fix production.
did i feel great? mixed.
cost (real):
- weekends got eaten
- constant context switching
- even off-hours my brain still felt “on-call”
physically i’m good (still kept my exercise schedule). mentally ... the job took a lot of my personal time, and i felt it.
anti-pattern i caught: i tried to delegate but still micromanaged (fake delegation). this year i learned to trust my members and let them work.
control is expensive.
//love / partnership
work and life: you should have a partner. not in a motivational poster way - in a very practical way.
this year i could do a lot because i wasn’t doing it alone.
besides my job, i got to accompany her through her year: thesis, internship, walking with her on a cold night in Đà Lạt, watching her graduate, baking bread together.
i can’t pick one “special moment”.
that’s the point.
it wasn’t one highlight - it was the steady accumulation of normal days becoming sacred.
also learned something very obvious but very real: if i want to be successful, i need real time away from blue-light screens to recharge dopamine (in a good way).
//2026
tech moved too fast this year. the gap between the start of 2025 and the end of 2025 is huge. i can’t even imagine 2026.
hopefully AI won’t take my job? xD (if it does, please take meetings first)
for 2026, i hope it’s both fast and slow:
- fast in progress.
- slow in life.
balance (definition): when i’m with people i love, i’m not secretly checking Slack. no “quick reply”, no half-present mode.
just there.
and yeah - big goal:
build something that's mine
a thing that slowly earns me more quiet, more choice, more time.
