Year in Review '25

December has been a somewhat calmer month, which maybe is a good way to end such an eventful year. At the risk of repeating myself, I would say that 2025 has been a year full of change, new challenges and adventures. I am, generally, quite happy with how this year has developed: from moving to a new apartment, to getting a new job, to traveling.

This month, I’m skipping the regular monthly recap and, instead, focusing on looking back at the not quantifiable enough goals I set last year, and see what changed, what happened, and what I’m hoping to see and do from now on. Let’s take a look!

✍️ Website

In the course of 2025, I did not make that many changes to this website, which follows the trend I’ve been seeing the past years, especially in terms of appearance. I did, however, make some smaller changes: added support for POSSing directly to Mastodon 🐘 and Bluesky 🦋, added a view transition between pages, and condensed the content sections.

Last year I set to keep on publishing my monthly “Recently” posts, which I’ve done. At the time I considered doing them weekly, but I realized that wouldn’t work for me. After all, there’s not that much happening weekly that I’d like to share online.

In 2026, I plan to continue actively posting on this website, both my status updates, but also more photos. I’d like to take and publish more photos in general. So, let’s see if that ends up working. I also have a growing list of things I would like to change on this website, but who knows if those will happen.

🍄 Life

This year I kept ticking items off my impossible list: I reached the 20 countries visited, visited Madeira, attended a World Expo, and quite a few other things. When it comes to traveling, I also did what I was hoping to last year: see something more of Asia or the Americas, in this case both.

On the course of this year, we also moved to a different apartment, albeit on the same building. We moved from the 6th to the 18th floor, from a 1 bedroom apartment to a 2 bedroom apartment. It has a much better view of the city, and also a lot more sunlight. That was definitely very much welcomed.

When it comes to my Dutch (which I mentioned last year), I think it keeps getting better. It’s hard not to when I use it every single day. I’ve read a few more books in Dutch, as well as participating in a few events. My work is also in Dutch, so… yeah.

In general, so much has happened that I can’t just go and list everything. Fortunately, I do monthly recaps, so it’s there to find. In 2026, and I know this is very generic, I’m mostly hoping to keep doing things I enjoy and keep growing and happy.

💪 Health

Looking back at what I said last year, I think it was a mostly positive year, especially in the fitness world. I set to do more cardio, and I completed the Couch to 5K program in the first half of the year. I had some knee pain afterwards, but I think I just progressed too fast in terms of speed. I got back to running in August and haven’t had any complaints about the knees since. Probably because I now take care of not running too fast. So that’s nice. According to the stats, I run 235 km this year.

My wrists also improved quite a lot, even though I had to wear a brace for a few months. They’re not at 100% yet, and I wonder if they ever will, but I don’t have that many complaints in my daily life as long as I’m careful about certain things. This also means I got back to the strength training, but this time at home. I bought some adjustable dumbbells too!

In 2026, I’m hoping to overcome my fear of deep water and eventually going for swims regularly by taking lessons and actually learning how to properly swim and be able to keep myself afloat. Lessons are beginning in January, after an eternity on the waiting list. I plan on continuing my strength training, running and also stretching.

💼 Work

When it comes to work, the hopes of staying motivated and feeling challenged didn’t last long. At the middle of the year, I did change jobs and since then I’ve been feeling much more motivated and challenged. The fact that I’m working on open source code also helps: I do feel this way I’m contributing more than I did before.

In 2026, I’m just hoping for the same: that my work stays motivating and challenging, and I’m generally very curious to see how the space of digital identity and digital credentials develops through the year. This year many things happened, especially when it comes to maturing of specifications and agreements. However, I think I was actually expecting a bit more.

With this post, I close this year on this website. I wish every reader an amazing 2026, with all luck and success. Happy New Year 2026 🎆!