As another year comes to a close, it’s time for my annual reflection. Looking back at 2025, it was a year of small but meaningful changes. Building better habits, exploring new places, and growing both personally and professionally.
Personal Growth
Health & Fitness
The biggest win for me this year was finally sticking to a workout routine. I’ve started and stopped so many things before, like gym memberships and swimming classes, but this time was different. I picked up skipping after watching the anime “Hajime no Ippo.” The main character, Ippo, keeps pushing himself not because he’s naturally talented, but because he finds joy in trying. That resonated with me.
I started with barely 10 skips at a time, struggling through each one. Fast forward to now, and I’m doing 180-190 skips in one go. I know it might sound easy or normal to someone else, but for me, someone who’s never been able to stick with anything fitness-related, this feels like a big deal.
Learning to Cook
Another major shift was learning to cook. I used to order food almost every day, but this year I taught myself some basic dishes. I’m cooking from time to time now. I feel much better eating home-cooked food. I still order sometimes, but not as frequently as before. Next year, I’m hoping to learn more recipes.
Home Visits
I only made it back to Odisha twice this year, which is less than usual. But the time I spent with family was meaningful.
New Phone
Upgraded from iPhone 13 to iPhone 17 Pro. I could have just replaced the battery, but I wanted to buy a new phone. Better battery and camera.
Work & Projects
This year was intense on the work front. I took ownership of a major infrastructure project that involved:
- Architecting an entire ML infrastructure system from scratch
- Working across 4-5 microservices simultaneously
- Handling large-scale ML inference systems for concurrent users
- Managing the migration from monolithic to microservices architecture
- Leading the shift from single-tenant to multi-tenant systems
The multi-tenant migration wasn’t my first choice. I’m not a fan of changing architecture just for the sake of it, but it made business sense. We’ve already seen the benefits: reduced AWS costs since we no longer need to spin up separate EC2 instances for each organization.
I also spent time learning more about Docker internals, database internals, and Linux kernel concepts.
For daily work, Claude has become my go-to coding assistant, while I use ChatGPT for personal stuff.
Blog
I migrated my blog from Next.js to Astro and customized it to fit my needs. While I didn’t publish as much as I wanted to, it’s still progress from previous years. My goal for 2026 is to write more technical content and share what I’m learning.
Travel
I didn’t travel as extensively as I would have liked, but I made it to some great places:
Mumbai (January) - My first time in the city. Saw the crowds, experienced the local trains. It’s a busy place, and people were generally helpful.
Rewa, Madhya Pradesh (February) - Attended my friend’s sister’s wedding. We traveled by train, and on the way back, our train was delayed. Had to book a last-minute cab to Raipur to catch our flight to Hyderabad.
North Goa (March/April) - Explored different beaches and spots.
Srisailam (May) - Visited the Jyotirlinga in AP.
South Goa (June/July) - Second visit, more laid back and just to chill out.
Coorg & Mysuru (September) - While the accommodation in Coorg wasn’t great, the place itself was beautiful. I really enjoyed Mysuru though. The greenery, the food, the people. Everything about it was wonderful.
North & South Goa (November) - Third visit to Goa this year. Stayed in luxury hotels and explored areas we hadn’t seen before in South Goa. Probably the best Goa trip yet.
Throughout the year, I also explored countless cafes and restaurants around Hyderabad with friends.
Events & Entertainment
Comedy Shows: Caught live performances by Samay Raina (August), Gaurav Kapoor, Sai Kiran, and Shamik Chakrabarti. Also attended Aditya Rikhari’s event in February. He’s pretty famous now because of one of his songs. The Tech Roast Show in November was fun too.
Anime & Manga: I watched a lot of anime this year, but my top ones were Frieren, Hajime no Ippo, and Haikyu!! For manga, I’ve been following One Piece, Solo Leveling, Sakamoto Days, One Punch Man, and Dragon Ball.
Festivals: Visited several Durga Puja pandals around Hyderabad in October. Also attended Dhanuyatra in my hometown. It’s a famous festival worth looking up if you haven’t heard of it.
Wrapping Up
That’s a wrap! 2025 wasn’t a dramatic year, but it was steady and meaningful. I built better habits, explored new places, and found more inner peace than I’ve had in a while. The small wins like sticking with skipping or learning to cook matter more than I thought they would.
For 2026, I’m hoping to travel more, both within India and internationally. I want to write more technical blogs and continue improving at cooking. Most importantly, I want to keep building on the consistency I’ve found this year.
If you’ve read this far, thank you.
Onwards to 2026.