I could have never predicted where I was last year. 2025 was a year of transitions, travels, and facing some hard physical and mental hurdles. From traveling across Portugal, Germany, Vienna, Singapore, Malaysia, and Vietnam, to transitioning out of my role at Memfault, it was a year defined by change.
If you want to review last years recap/goals post, you can, but it isn’t necessary.
2025 Quarterly goals
Q1
- 2 Memfault goals: They weren’t measurable, so I think I probably did them with 75% efficacy.
- Read 2 business/product books: Completed, but didn’t find either book to progress my knowledge forward. I think I have been lucky enough to work with smart people. I was able to learn from those smart people most of the lessons of these books.
- Product Management for UX People
- Book 2: Transformed: Moving to the Product Operating Model
- Attend 20 BJJ Classes: 80%. I attended 16.
- 13 Lifting (body weight or otherwise) sessions: ~53%. I did 7.
- Do an A1.1 German course: I failed so hard at this.
Q2
- 2 Memfault specific goals: Crushed them both.
- Attend 20 BJJ Classes: I attended 34.
- Lift 13 times: I lifted 3 times.
- Complete A1.1 German: I did some lessons, but I am calling this goal 10% complete.
Q3
- BJJ and lifting goals: I had lifting and BJJ goals, but due to my labrum tear these had to switch to PT goals, which I did a good job completing.
- Paint 13 times: I got the necessary equipment and did some painting but didn’t hit the 13 number.
- Draw 13 times: I did pretty well at this; I enjoy blind contour drawing.
Q4
- Attend 10 BJJ classes: I attended 28. My shoulder seems to be doing better.
- Do 10 cardio sessions: I think I did 21, but I started counting pickleball as cardio if it was 2 hours long and there weren’t many subs.
- 30 strength sessions: I did 40. This was mostly because the gym in Malaysia was very convenient.
- 5 painting sessions: I did 3.
- 13 drawing sessions: I enjoyed drawing more than painting in Q3 so I leaned into this. I also did line drawings that Randi could paint.
- Ship 1 new project: I built a proof of concept for something, but nothing shippable.
Recap of 2025
Travel
- North Carolina: The year started in NC. Time with family is so fun; all the games, activities, and yummy food are great. With all the eating big, I went to the gym a bunch and got the opportunity to lift more than normal!
- Portugal: Portugal was our second location. As fun as family time is, it feels great getting some downtime. I got to do some BJJ and lots of walks looking out over the cliffs; our longest hike was 13 miles. We stayed in the Algarve and Madeira island. The airport at Madeira is a modern marvel (video of landings). Portugal is one of the few places in Europe we found with pickleball, so it was nice to wean off our addiction. Randi broke a crown and had to go to a dentist in another country for a semi-serious procedure. She was so brave about it; I guess having no other choices will do that. We met the coolest retired couple here. We got to go to their house and see sketchbooks from all their travels.
- Berlin: Randi said “the Berlin sun shines only on you.” I really like Berlin, and apparently it’s not a sunny place.
- Germany & Prague (Week 37): Carolina and my Mom came to visit us. It was a wonderful time showing them around.
- Vienna (Week 41): Spent a week here with family. While games were fun, traveling with a little child around was tiring and stressful at times. It was nice, though, to speak native English again without constantly adjusting my vocabulary to match others’ English levels.
- Singapore (Week 42): This was my second or third time staying in a pod hostel. I can’t help but think pod hostels are just bunkbeds with more plastic. It was a unique and cozy experience.
- Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur): We absolutely loved Kuala Lumpur and hope to return one day. We established a great fitness routine doing yoga every morning, playing a ton of pickleball at Mothership, lifting, and doing BJJ. A few friends from Germany, and my mom and sister came to visit us. It is very fun getting to travel with friends and family.
- Vietnam: We moved to Hanoi and were joined by some Denver friends. Hanoi was very different from Germany; the road rules are just suggestions. After Hanoi we did a cruise and then spent a month in a beach town, where I did BJJ and got injured twice.
Mental Landscape & Transitions
The year was a bit hard on me mentally. I felt pretty lost and disconnected from my US community and my German community. Work had a lot of changes going on and it felt like several of them didn’t go my way.
As we prepared to leave Berlin, we felt nervous that we were making a mistake (Week 38). Constantly moving makes homes feel comfortable and foreign all at the same time. After you leave, a little clutter, an empty fridge, and different furniture are the only clues you ever lived somewhere. We calculated we have slept in ~150 beds over the past 5 years.
The transition also made me crave my own space—sharing tight quarters without a room to retreat to or having to clear my workspace for lunch became a real friction point. I hit a low point with my career passion, feeling like I was coasting on acquired skills and had lost the drive to create better design or code. However, establishing a heavy fitness routine in Malaysia (BJJ, lifting, yoga) really helped ground me and lead me back into a place where I felt like I could create again.
Health & Injuries
I got a few small injuries with BJJ at the beginning of the year, and a larger one at the end of the year. My shoulder was pretty messed up, but I did my PT and took time off. Never cross legs while I am controlling someone in back control, and always keep your arms at your sides when I am mounted. Lessons learned by having to spend weeks off the mats.
The larger injury is that I now have a snapping in the back of my elbow whenever I extend/contract at the elbow. I think my Ulnar Nerve is drifting out of place, but perhaps it is just a tendon/ligament that is out of place. We will see when I get back on the mats.
In Q3, I suffered a labrum tear, which completely derailed my BJJ and lifting goals for a couple of months and hurt my motivation. By Q4, my shoulder was healed enough that I was able to get back on the mats and even exceed my previous max lifts while in Malaysia. Sadly this wasn’t permanent; toward the very end of the year I had 3 issues: toe pain, sickness, and then damage to the elbow/nerve.
The Bike Saga
We purchased 3 bikes. You might think it’s weird that we purchased 3 for two people; did we get a mountain bike and two gravel bikes? No. The first bike we bought got stolen within 1 week of purchase. Berlin gives little sympathy for a stolen bike. The phrase they use is “You don’t get your bike stolen in Berlin, you just lose your turn” (the German version apparently makes more sense).
We did some fun bike rides with friends! One was a trip from Berlin north. The other was Berlin to Vienna. In Vienna, we stayed at Dylan and Lanka’s friends’ house. It was so nice. The office was amazing. It had kettlebells, a bike trainer, a sit-stand desk, and a door that closed. I felt great being there.
Leaving Memfault
I had an awesome ~2 years working at Memfault. I was able to come in as the first designer and help the company mature its design capacity. I got to do some great research and learn a ton about the IoT/firmware space. It was also great getting to fill in on the product team and act as a product manager when the team was short.
Sadly, all good things must come to an end. With the acquisition and different managers/team composition, I determined it was my time to leave.
Before leaving Memfault, Q2 was a busy and messy period where I pushed hard on pitching and delivering several projects. After leaving, I focused on some personal creative outlets. I also started using AI capabilities in Obsidian to augment reading my old notes.
Thoughts I find interesting
- The span of adulthood: The period from “I am a child pretending to be an adult” to “I am old and gonna die soon” is like 3 years, and you don’t really know it when you’re in it.
- The cost of perfect comfort: Being perfectly comfortable is expensive. If I want to try to remove all of the pain and suffering from my life, I will pay deeply in two ways:
- Money: Surface-level things like “it costs more to heat my houses to a comfortable temperature,” but also bigger things—avoiding the pain of working out and doing PT will lead to health problems.
- Experiences: Wanting to avoid all of the pain from a new experience will cost me many fun and new things in life.
- Inspiration from reading: I can get temporarily inspired by books I am reading. Doing something like rereading Training for the New Alpinism gets me amped!
- Public Transportation vs. Personal Responsibility: People say that Europe has better public transportation. I think this is mostly true, but it removes personal responsibility. We did a hike in Madeira that took us 3 hours to get there. That is what it takes. Driving is more convenient and faster. It is also more expensive, less healthy, and worse for the environment.
2026 goals
I will continue to do my quarterly goals, so we will see what they end up being. Some ideas I am interested in:
- Do a 50-mile backpacking trip?
- Squat, bench, and deadlift my body weight.
- Get a 2.5 DUPR score (pickleball rating).
- Build a piece of gear (tent, bike bag, etc.).
- Be part of a US-based community.
- Lay groundwork for having social impact (choose a charity I want to invest time in for 2027). I think the best way to do this would be volunteering for x different groups.