Well 2025 was a year...
This past year (2025) didn't go the way I expected. With <<gestures vaguely at everything>>, obviously not all of it was great. But some was! And mostly, it was busy.
Sometimes we don't end up where we expect
When I decided to start a blog at the end 2024, I expected I'd be continuing to work at Endor Labs, helping to craft product messaging. Then, surprise... Checkmarx made me an offer I couldn't refuse: join a Security Research team again and help them effectively share their work with the larger security and developer community.
Time for personal blogs? Yeah, right; I was busy building Checkmarx Zero. Writing, editing, and promoting research blog posts is fun and busy work. But at the end of a day of that, writing for oneself feels... exhausting? Something like that.
Coding as a hobby again?! Neat
On the upside, stepping a bit away from helping to build a product and demos and such means I code less at work. And what I do code at work is more fun. Which means I get to write code for myself and my own hobbies again!
My home automation setup has never been more pleasant, and writing the glue to stick together my home media server (videos, music, books, and product manuals) stopped seeming like work and started being fun again. Who knows, maybe I'll even get to work on an open-source project again.
Oh right, highschoolers
On the other hand, with my twins starting High School – and all the D&D clubs and FIRST Robotics team stuff and so on – I might not have as much time for personal projects after all.
But watching kids learn to build and code a competitive robot has been fun so far, and I expect it will be even more fun now that the 2026 season (REBUILT) is kicking off with a whole new game. Honestly, best sport ever: not only all the teamwork and such that "regular" sports help with, but also spontaneous cooperation (teams are randomly connected into 3-bot "sides" for each round) and building a project together (a real hardware-and-code robot, pretty much from scratch). Honestly, take a second and sponsor your local team: they probably don't get enough love.
And watching my kids kick ass at math and science and art and humanities is so satisfying. I'm glad they found a path that's challenging, and that they're learning how to deal with the classes that aren't as interesting or engaging for them.
3D printing reloaded
And 2025 ended with me getting back into 3D printing as a hobby. Well... sort of.
My last attempt at the hobby involved building an Ender 3 with a lot of special modifications. I learned some important things:
- Maintaining 3D printers is not a part I find fun. I don't mind it if I must, but I want a printer that requires minimal maintenance.
- The hobby I'm interested in is less 3D Printing and more designing stuff for 3D printing. It's like those artists that take photos of cool stuff they do in nature; the design is the art, but one has to capture it somehow!
- I'm such a nerd that my main interest in a "crafty" hobby is one where I can program an object into existence...
So instead of a kit machine like the Creality Ender series, I got myself a Bambu P1S with the AMS (basically I can switch among 4 different spools of plastic filament without fussing with the machine; enabling, among other things, convenient multi-color printing). And in grand tinkering tradition, after the first few "playing around" prints, the next batch has been modifications to make the thing more pleasant.
I don't believe in New Year's resolutions
But that doesn't mean I don't reflect a bit and decide to make some changes. For me, it's more about changing habits and priorities than it is about making "resolutions". So the things I'm going to focus on in 2026:
Better "me time" balance
I've noticed a trend where I so prioritize taking care of others — whether that's for work or family or friends or communities — that I approach burnout before taking time to have the "me time" I need. Then I binge on that time, which while not unhealthy, exactly, isn't really a healthy balance. So in 2026 I'm putting some focus into being more intentional about balancing what I do for others with taking care of my own needs, hopefully better-integrating the two into my week-to-week life.
More travel and novelty
I'm at the age where it's very easy to get into a rut. But also, my kids are becoming more and more independent, and what they need from me is less and less my constant help and attention. And they're building their own life and are living it more independently.
This frees time for me to do things that they're not interested in, like seeing new places and spending time further away from home than the immediate metro.
In 2026, I'm going to make better plans to use my work-location flexibility to take "working vacations" (best thing ever: working normal days, but close your laptop and you're in a beautiful and/or interesting place for the evenings), see new and interesting things, and have new experiences that are less kid-centric.
At the same time, focusing on making the time I do get to spend with my kids as high quality as I can make it.
Deliberate focus on education
I learn a lot through my work, so it's not like this has atrophied. But I love to learn things, and I find a lot of joy (and a lot of practical value, actually) in learning a wide variety of things. For me, knowing a little about a lot is joyful, and it sometimes allows me to see connections that others miss, which is also its own joy.
Onward and... well... onward
2026 is already, and is going to continue to be, a rough one in a lot of ways. For people who value the rule of law, want communities that are vibrant and interesting, and who generally want everyone to have basic human rights: it's tough to watch the culture of the US shift rapidly so much further from that than it has been in a very long time.
But the only way out of such things is through, in my experience. And while I do what I can to support my community, I also know that my own joy and my own well-being need to matter. "Put your own mask on before helping others" and all that.