After I also took the time to reflect back on my year as a whole. This year felt bittersweet in a way I couldn't have imagined. I've decided to split my reflection up in two different posts. I already reflected back on my career and aspriations in a different post and decided that a general reflection that hits topics both professionally and personally here.
While I already have dedicated a whole post on my career journey I think a review of 2025 wouldn't be complete without including at least some bit of my professional career. It might also give insight to people who by chance only read this one post.
Professionally
Looking back this year on my career I noticed that I am actively searching to find out what I want my career to be. While I definitely enjoy software development I feel like I'm somewhat stuck. This all stems from comparing myself to other people which in all honesty is not always the best thing to do. On the same note I know that the people I compare myself to I view as people who I think are great in what they do.
Being inspired in finding out where you wanto to go to in your career isn't bad at all, but don't ever making comparing yourself a negative thing is something I learned with trail and error. As a developer who started out in software development almost a decade ago I seen and worked on a lot of things. My career started with mainly agency work and I specialized myself working with Laravel and all jobs expect my current job had me working with the framework. In those years I have been lucky that Laravel has pushed itself as a fullstack framework, which has prompted me to learn more about frontend frameworks like NextJS, React, and VueJS.
Apart from wanting to be a better developer I noticed my interests have shifted to wanting to be the person that uplift other people. Everyone has something they excell in and I believe everyone should be uplifted and get the oppertunity to become better in what they want to do. Some people enjoy working on simple websites for people in their community and other people enjoy creating high traffic applications. While I am not yet where I want to be in my career I do think it is important for myself in being able to uplift others. Not sure if there is a job that encapsulates that but I won't give up in learning enough to be able to do something that allows me to achieve this.
So if you know what role that is supposed to be let me know!
Community
This year was special for myself because I started engaging with multiple communities again. I started out this year reconnecting a bit more in the Laravel community and I attended Laracon EU which was blast. I got the opportunity to quickly talk with Aaron Francis, and while our conversation was short I definitely enjoyed it. While I struggle with starting a conversation I had the oppertunity to talk with Feri Bartha who works at Laravel and he made my time at the conference amazing.
I've joined CoderDads this year to help myself in getting more in touch with communities again. My main reason for joining was that I missed like-minded people to talk to. The CoderDads community isn't big but that made it feel more approachable for myself.
After a while I decided to join the Torc community discord because I still had the feeling that I missed something more. I joined Torc because this year I felt I need to look at my career as work and not something that will just happen. But after joining I discovered that Torc isn't solely for people to get tips for their career but some truly amazing people are there. The Torc community gave me a warm welcome that I missed with a lot of communities I tried to join in past years. Thinking back at how I started my career it was the community that made me stick in working as a software developer which I find funny how I yet again am seeking out communities and people after almost a decade.
In my eyes communities are like relationships. Not every community is meant to be there for a lifetime, sometimes they are only there for a season which is perfectly fine. Having access to a community can give one a broader viewpoint to certain area's of there personal and professional life.
Personal
Being part of communities has also improved my personal life. I generally don't have a big group of friends or people I talk to on a regular basis in the past. While my friend group hasn't really grown I do think I am doing much better at connecting with people in the communities that I've joined. The last few months I had someone reach out to schedule coffee chats every month which I enjoy a lot. I want to try to do more coffee chats next year and just getting the hang of a keeping in contact with people.
Only a few months left before I work as a developer for a decade. Yes really that long already! But what most people don't know is that I would probably not be doing this without my amazing wife ( not on paper but after 15 years it's easier to just say wife! ). We became parents at a young age and I moved across the country after she told me she was pregnant and I finished school. Both of our parents knew it was a difficult time for the both of us. My wife's parents offered me to let me stay with them until we got our own house, and during that first year I started working in a factory that really wasn't it for me. I've worked there for over 5 years and after my first year we got our own appartment. During those five years I've tinkered and learned myself how to develop websites and small applications without anyone teaching me the right way. After some years I told my wife that I wanted to quit my job and try to work as a software developer, and I remember her looking at me and saying well just try it then. Now almost a decade later and more than 15 years together I am happy that you have always been on my side.
While professionaly I am looking for what I want my career to be, personally I've grown a lot in the way I look at life even while it gets hard for our family. I've come to the conclusion that while I may sound mature from time to time, my wife is actually pushes me to the mature side of being a parent. We devide and and conquer tasks because we utilize each others strong points and honestly I love that in our relationship. I am looking forward to see who everyone will become next year. Change is inevitable and the only thing we can do is to accept it in the best way we can.
Something I do for my family is sending cards with personalized texts on them because I believe that writing your own text and being genuine shows the person that you care about them. I think this is a perfect moment to write a word for my wife.
We were and still are complete opposites yet you made showed me that even when we are different we can always find a middleground. In the thoughest of times we have tried to be there for each other. We didn't always have 100% to give but we tried our best with what we did had to give.
I want to thank you for being the kind and loving mom and wife you are. And let's make 2026 a year that will last a lifetime.
