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2025 Retrospective

Originally published: December 31, 2025 Updated: January 1, 2026

A look back at 2025: the highs, lows, and lessons learned Reflection drives change—without it, how can we grow?

This post is structured in the following manner:

  1. What happened in 2025?
  2. What didn’t go well?
  3. Lessons learned
  4. Personal
  5. Closing thoughts

What happened in 2025?

January

In January, I left my full-time, non-tech job as a buyer for a government subcontractor for a part-time, contract-based software engineering position. After five years in an industry I wasn’t interested in this felt incredibly liberating. While I’d be making slightly less, I’d also be working half as much; it was a win-win as far as I was concerned, as I could spend more time working on learning and coding.

Also in January, I gave my first talk for This Dot Labs! This was another big win for me as I quickly checked off one thing I wanted to accomplish in 2025.

Alt text: A digital graphic featuring a man with glasses and a beard wearing a black cap and hoodie looking to the right. The background is a starry space scene with a large moon at the bottom right. Text in bold letters reads "BUILD WITH astro," with "BUILD" in purple and the rest in white. There are colorful 3D geometric shapes floating in space, along with a white hammer icon. Logos for "JS DROPS" and "MODERN WEB" appear at the bottom left.

Watch my talk, Why Not Astro?

You can also check out the site I made to accompany the talk.

March

March brought another amazing opportunity… giving a second talk; this time in person!

While I was already planning to attend the Vercel NYC Meetup hosted by Kap, I was pleasantly surprised when she asked if I would like to give a 10–15 minute talk. Though I didn’t have much time to prepare, I made it work and had a lot of fun doing so.

If I were giving this talk again, I’d rename it to “Design System Essentials” — it rolls off the tongue more easily.

Alt text: A speaker giving a presentation titled "Building An Essential Design System: Lessons from Vercel's Geist" to an audience in a modern conference room. The presenter stands to the right of a large screen displaying the presentation title, with a laptop and a drink on a small table beside him. The audience is seated facing the screen, attentively watching the talk. The room has light-colored walls, a window on the right, and storage cabinets on the left.

Check out my talk, Building an Essential Design System.

April

Quincy Larson, the man behind freeCodeCamp, asked me to be a guest on his podcast! A handful of my friends have since been featured there and I encourage you to check them out.

Alt text: Two men are shown against a dark blue background. The man on the left has short brown hair, a beard, and is wearing a black FreeCodeCamp t-shirt. The man on the right has a beard, glasses, and is wearing a black hoodie and a black cap with a white logo. Between them is white text with green checkmark icons that reads: "College drop-out. Living w/ Parents. Making $60/hour?" The FreeCodeCamp logo is in the top left corner.

Listen to my freeCodeCamp Podcast episode!

June

June was an absolutely wild month for me — three different events, five different flights, six different airports, meeting a ton of new people, and checking off a couple of things on my bucket list… it was amazing.

Starting off the month, once again, the community came through! After I thought I wouldn’t be able to attend RenderATL due to financial hardship (more info on that in the next section), Jason Torres reached out to the community to see who could and would financially support my trip to there. I wrote a thank you, but I can never do enough to pay these people back other than by paying it forward.

Alt text: Three men standing closely together indoors at a conference or event, smiling at the camera. The man on the left wears a black cap and black t-shirt with a pink lanyard and badge. The man in the middle, wearing glasses and a black t-shirt that says "Coding is fun!" with a computer graphic, has his arms around the other two. The man on the right wears a white backward cap, black shirt, and backpack, also with a pink lanyard and badge. The background shows other attendees and booths in a large, well-lit room.

The Saturday after Render ended, while waiting through endless delays at the airport, Jason Lengstorf reached out asking if I’d like to appear on his series, Web Dev Challenge! “Earlier that day I had breakfast with him and now he’s asking me to fly to Portland and be on one of his shows!” I thought, sitting in the airport terminal. There was no way I could say no, and thankfully my parents didn’t say “no” when fronting the cost for the last-minute flight from New York to Portland.

While my time in Portland for the Web Dev Challenge was short (1.5 days), it was an experience I’ll never forget. From eating a homemade dinner of chicken katsu at Jason’s, to being on set surrounded by far more talented engineers than I, to a killer celebratory dinner afterward… 11/10 would do again. Jason is a one-of-a-kind human being, and I cannot thank him enough.

Alt text: A pinned Polaroid photo showing a group of eight smiling people posing together against a dark background. The group consists of both men and women, dressed casually. The photo is dated "June 24, 2025" handwritten at the bottom. The Polaroid is pinned to a black fabric board with a red pushpin. Other pinned photos are partially visible around it.

Watch my Web Dev Challenge episode!

My time in Portland was short because I flew back to New York overnight to attend Vercel Ship in NYC the very next day!

Vercel Ship took place on June 25, 2025, at an incredible building in NYC, and Vercel went all out. Naturally, the talks and people were great, but they even had the food labels branded to match their design system. Absolutely amazing attention to detail!

While I faded fast, it was great to see people I knew, and meet a bunch of others.

Alt text: A group selfie of four smiling people indoors at a busy event or conference. In the foreground, a woman with curly hair smiles at the camera. Behind her, a man with glasses and a beard smiles, next to an Asian man flashing a peace sign with both hands. In the background, another man raises one arm enthusiastically while others walk and chat in the spacious, well-lit venue.

Lastly, at the end of June, I started doing some part-time contract work for Quantiiv, where I helped build a dashboard for restaurants that integrated with their POS, alongside AI-powered analytics and a chatbot.

July

July proved to be a very formative month for me; I had a good number of interviews and a (paid) work trial the last week of the month (July 28–August 1) after having weekly interviews throughout the month.

During this trial week, I was fully assimilated into the team: attending their daily stand-up meetings, joining them for game time, and learning the product I’d be working on if I was fortunate enough to get a full-time offer from them.

August

And lucky enough I was, because on the last day of my work trial — August 1 — I was offered the full-time position at Pragma, where I now work on FirstLook!

This job has been nothing short of life-changing. All of the work I put in, all the sacrifices I made, and all of the energy mentors have poured into me finally paid off. I cried tears of happiness and relief when I got the offer — I’m tearing up now just thinking about it!

Everything about this job truly feels like a perfect fit; from the tech stack (Astro & SolidJS) to the industry (video games), to the team I work with. Getting this job reaffirmed to me that we truly are in control of creating our own luck: if I weren’t so headstrong about Astro, if I didn’t put out a tweet in July that I was still looking for work, none of this would’ve happened.

I’ll be joining my team for an offsite during the last week of January 2026, and I can’t wait!

September – December

The rest of the year, I was solely focused on a couple of things:

  1. giving it my all at work
  2. paying off debts and repairing my credit in an effort to move out during Q1 2027

With the new job came great things: money, health insurance, focus, and more. However, with that also came a couple of sacrifices; these included not being able to attend both the Commit Your Code (CYC) and Magnolia (formerly MagnoliaJS) conferences in September and October, respectively.

However, as a result of me not going, a few other devs and I were able to “sponsor” my brother, Walter, to attend CYC!

Through the last quarter–plus of the year of the year, I focused on doing my best at work, but also took my foot off the gas outside of it. I think it was a well-earned break, though the itch to build has been ramping up the last few weeks of December.

In December, I appeared as guest on the Tech Commute Podcast hosted by Jason Torres; that was a blast and a great way to start my two week vacation from work.

Alt text: Promotional image for the season finale of "Tech Commute" podcast. The background is a black grid. At the top are two circular photos side by side with green and white borders. The left photo shows a man with short dark hair, wearing a black jacket and a striped shirt, speaking and gesturing with his hand. The right photo shows a man with glasses, a beard, and a light pink shirt smiling in front of a tech-themed background with a glowing code symbol. A blue oval on the right side says "FEATURING RYAN FURRER." The text reads "SEASON FINALE TECH COMMUTE" with "SEASON FINALE" in white and green and "TECH COMMUTE" in pixelated black on a green rectangle. Below is the description: "Join Jason and Ryan, a design engineer, for a conversation about tech and NOT about tech." The date and time "December 22nd 3:00PM EST" is on the left, and "RSVP for updates torc.community" is on the right. Two white logos are at the top corners.

Listen to my Tech Commute Podcast episode!

What didn’t go well?

Fumbling a freelance client opportunity

In mid–late March, I fumbled a good opportunity for client work. This was due to my depression coming back in a major way that thankfully subsided at some point in April after therapy and self-care.

The client handled it with such grace, and I couldn’t be more appreciative; as did the person who originally recommended me for the work.

Part-time contracting

Remember that part-time contracting gig I left my non-tech job for? I think it was mid–late April when I stopped getting work. Was this the result of a mistake I made? I know I made one that I spoke to the boss about, but I was not told I’d stop getting work as a result. I asked repeatedly through the months but was never assigned more before officially parting ways later in the year.

I have no ill-feelings toward the boss or company I was at; I’m very appreciative of the fact that I was recommended, and they took a chance on me. However, the lack of income did affect things over the coming months.

Fumbling an opportunity for DevEd

I was offered an opportunity I could only have dreamed of in the past; to make a course for a Developer Education (DevEd) platform. I fumbled it by saying “yes” to too many things. Burnout, paired with the depression I mentioned above, hit me hard and fast in Q1.

Lessons learned

  1. Learn when to say “No” or “Not right now.”

    For me, that means saying “no” more often than I had been. This is nothing new to me, but something I need to be reminded of.
  2. If a problem arises, communicate early and often.

    Again, this isn’t new to me, but I need regular reminders of this.
  3. You create your own luck, good or bad, with the actions you take.

    I think I created my own good luck by being active in the tech community, being my own advocate/ambassador, and putting in the work. However, this can go both ways, and if you make the wrong choices, it could harm you as well.
  4. Most people won’t remember that you’re looking for work, or other details about you. Learn to be your own ambassador and promote yourself.

    I made a few posts earlier in the year reminding people that I was still looking for work. I didn’t do this to appear dramatic or as if I was begging, but because every time I shared one, someone would reach out and say “I didn’t know you were still looking!”

    You’re not on other people’s minds as often as you think you might be.

Personal

As mentioned, my personal life had ups and downs this year, though since August it has been mainly up. I’m off my antidepressants and am now on ADHD medication after being diagnosed by my psychiatrist.

I have a clear plan for for 2026, to gear up financially for my move in 2027. Right now, I’m looking to move to Austin, TX.

This year, my family said goodbye to my grandmother, the last of my grandparents. She would’ve been 95 on January 16, 2026, and saw a lot in her life after fleeing to the U.S. during World War II.

Closing thoughts

Firstly, if you read this far, thank you. If you got anything out of my rambling, I’d love to hear from you over on Twitter (X) or LinkedIn.

Secondly, we all have more power than we think we do; it is up to you whether you do good with that power or not. I am hopeful for a fruitful 2026 for everyone and look forward to seeing what it brings.