For 2025

headline

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.

ngot-meo-hoang-banner

//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).