In this last edition of 2024, I’m going to share the top 5 things that happened to me this year. This list could be a lot longer, and there are plenty of mistakes, lessons learned, and things I’m going to be working on improving next year but ending the year with gratitude for everything in my life seems right.
Top 5 highlights of 2025:
Watching my daughter grow
This one is obvious, but I want to share it because I think how much toddlers change from 1 to 2 makes this year special for me as a father. At the beginning of the year she was just starting to walk, she could only say a few words, and she still slept with me every night. Now she’s an independent little girl who hardly ever stops talking (or singing), isn’t afraid to give us orders, and is already starting preschool next week. I’d like to think we are doing something right as parents, but honestly I think we got lucky to have such an amazing little girl. Watching her go from a helpless little bundle to being able to articulate herself, come up with funny questions, and even disobey us has been awesome to watch. I’m sure she’ll continue to get sassier and smarter as she gets older, and I can’t wait to watch it.
Exciting first full year at Kyriba
I’ve been with a fair share of companies at this point in my career, they’ve all had their positive and negative points. But I can truly say, I’ve never been on a team of such impressive and collaborative colleagues. There were some challenges, along with a lot of great achievements, but there’s an overwhelming sense of support and upward momentum. My role grew this year, both in terms of responsibility as well as new geographies I hadn’t been exposed to before, meeting these new areas head-on, together with the rest of the team has been immensely fulfilling. I’m super excited for what we can achieve in 2025 and beyond!
Starting Before We Get There podcast
Starting a podcast was really something that came out of the blue. I went from having the idea appear in my brain out of nowhere, to releasing the podcast with the first 3 episodes at the same time in around a month. And now I’ve just released my 12th episode, which is the first time I have recorded a solo talk, without a guest. Even though it is just getting started, looking back on the work I’ve put out so far I’m really proud of the guests I’ve had on and stories I’ve been able to share. One of my core ideas for starting the podcast was that there are many amazing people around us and we don’t get the chance to understand their stories through our daily interactions. I think the episodes so far demonstrate this well, so many people have valuable lessons to share, not only by what they are experts in, but through their life paths. I have a bunch more exciting guests lined up for next year, so stay tuned!
Many traveling firsts
Between the pandemic and having a kid, I hadn’t done a lot of traveling over the past few years, mostly a lot of short trips around SEA for work. This year was fun, because not only were all of my work trips to places I hadn’t been to before. We also took four fun family trips to places new to both my daughter and I as well. My favorite times were experiencing things off the beaten path, that not many tourists or business travellers do. From a rugby game in Sydney, to baseball in Taiwan, and pro wrestling in Tokyo, catching local sporting events is something I added to my list to try to incorporate into all my trips. Along with doing local hikes and visiting BJJ gyms, gives me a lot of fun options of things to do away from the main tourist spots wherever I go. I doubt I’ll make to as many “new” places next year, but there are always more fun out of the way places to find.
Deepening relationship with my wife
We had our 10th anniversary this year, and hit a few other big milestones as well. It is probably different for us, since we didn’t have kids right after we got married, but becoming parents has made our marriage a lot stronger. We still have things we are working on, but I think we can both see each other from another perspective and most importantly, we both have a shared goal to work towards together, giving our daughter the best life possible. It’s cliche to say opposites attract, but the longer we are married, the more we see that we have different strengths and weaknesses. And like on any team, the more we are able to leverage those strengths and mitigate the weaknesses, the better we can do. It isn’t easy when there are a lot of emotions involved, and we have a long way to go. But I’m grateful for this new stage in our relationship and believe we’ll continue to grow as the years go on.
That’s all for this week. I hope you’re having an awesome last weekend of 2024!