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Reflections on 2025

January 17, 2026

In 2025, I went through some big life changes. I moved to Taipei and started freelancing. I worked less than ever in my professional life, but work has never been more enthralling. And despite living further away from my friends and family than ever, I found ways to make the most of my time with them.

Life updates

I always wanted to live abroad. And 2025 really was the test year for my relocation to Taipei. I'm glad to report that settling was successful. This brought many new experiences, like learning Mandarin and learning about cultural differences to build new relationships.

Before this, I never lived more than 10 weeks abroad. Although I'm learning Chinese — and can get by for most of the daily things — English is my safety net here. But English isn't even my mother tongue, so it feels good to be comfortable enough to live “fully immersed.”

Living in Taiwan made it easy to travel elsewhere in East Asia. I went to Tokyo and Seoul, which were both mesmerizing experiences. I am now privileged to learn more about the common heritage and differences between the different cultures in the region. It's a privilege that I cherish; discovering the world and its people is humbling and fascinating.

My own roads continue to thread around Taiwan, and I think this partly sedentary, partly nomadic lifestyle is starting to grow on me. The variance of my freelancing schedule allows me to travel often to visit or to see my friends and family.

Freelancing in DX

Relocating to Taiwan was the opportunity to launch my freelance business. Despite the “hustle” it brought, freelancing also gave me more agency over my schedule. The positive is that I have more time to allocate to things outside client work.

The downside is that developer advocacy is, from my own bias toward the discipline, as much inward as it is outward oriented.

It's harder when you're not part of the team, when you don’t know the culture, when you don’t share the vision. It’s a bit more transactional, and it feels more like marketing. I was fortunate to retain my previous employer as a client, and so the shared trust and accumulated experience gave me more agency than a traditional freelancer might have.

Still, lacking the big picture from working in-house was a hindrance to improving developer experience. To have a 360° impact on the users, navigating the internal organization politics is a necessary evil.

Being more creative

I always had many side project ideas. But bearing them to completion was always the hard part. It's also much harder when you're facing a busy schedule, with all things competing for attention. When I was in Paris, my schedule was always busy; I had to schedule dinners at least one month in advance.

A busy life doesn’t equate a life full of memories. I don’t remember most of the events I went to. Now it's the opposite, my schedule is free every day, and I can plan anything from one day to the next. It's liberating. It was also key to fueling my creativity again. Quality free time gave me two things: downtime to think about things and energy to put them into action.

This year alone, I:

In all work-related things, the elephant in the room is obviously AI. I was already a frequent user of ChatGPT and Claude before, but in 2025, I perfected my skills using LLMs. It completely transformed the way I worked; it affected most of my approach to research, writing, planning, and development.

Prioritizing health

I think I managed to take care of my health more than I did in the previous year. First, exiting a busy social life in Paris made it easier to quit smoking and drinking. Although those things still occur now and then, they are now occasional. Quitting altogether would be better, but going from weekly to quarterly is already a massive improvement.

As far as physical exercise is concerned, I'm still recovering from a toe injury. I managed to at least get in activity most days by doing my 9k steps a day for 188 days, despite being unable to walk for approximately two months.

I started exercising for at home and stuck to it for a bit more than a month. I failed to keep good habits when I was hosting friends or when I was traveling. Similarly, I got a grip on my overeating habits for a quarter or so, but prolonged holidays put an end to my good diet and weight loss streak.

As far as mental health is concerned, living further away from my usual environment allowed me to take a necessary step back to put some things into perspective. I came up with some answers to my own fears and understand some of my behavior better. I am less socially anxious and strive to care less about others' perception of my actions.

What’s next?

I'm not sure yet what I want most out of 2026. I enjoy the current life balance I have, and I want it to last.

So I think I'll just wish for more health, more adventures, and more creative ventures.

🫰