Year-end review 2025

Another year, another review.

It’s the time of the year again where I actually contribute to my blog. 2025 was a roller coaster for me, and I honestly don’t know where to begin.

So I’ll begin with a story.

Joy and Grief

After a lengthy process, my wife and I were delighted to adopt a sweet little chocolate, toy-obsessed bulldog named Kodiak.

It was a bit stressful for the first couple of weeks, but around week three Kodi started to feel like family.

He loved being cradled like a baby and snuggled. He would often lay on his back next to my wife in our recliner, and he would always let us know when he thought we weren’t giving him enough attention with his adorable grunts of discontent.

He filled our home with laughter.

A few weeks after adopting Kodi, on what we thought was a routine teeth cleaning at the vet, we learned that he had an aggressive, terminal illness.

We were devastated.

The vet said he had maybe a week left. Kodi held on for two.

We tried to fit as much as we could into his last days. We celebrated his birthday, we celebrated Christmas in June, and we made sure he was always surrounded by his favorite toys.

The end came all too soon, after his final check up at the vet.

We made sure he was comfortable, then, with tears in our eyes, we held him one last time as he went to sleep on his bed.

We didn’t want to let go.

We only knew Kodi for two months, but in that short time, he made an enormous impact on our family.

We miss him dearly, and will never forget the joy and laughter he gave us. He was such a sweet boy, and we’re glad we were able to give him the best life we possibly could in his final days.

Meanwhile, a much more welcome changes were happening at work.

A New Role

Earlier this year I moved into a new role as a Yum! Staff Engineer.

My primary focus is frontend architecture, which means a lot more drawing diagrams and writing documentation. I’m also continuing my work to improve frontend developer experience, something I’ve become quite passionate about.

My work this year has been all about transitioning a monolithic React application to micro frontends. We’ve been building up to this for a while now by splitting up the existing legacy code into several domain-based vertical slices.

Now, with the help of module federation, we’re stitching those slices together inside a shell application.

The micro frontend implementation was completed earlier this year, and now we’re working on the infrastructure bit. It’s exciting, and a bit stressful, to be building something our company has never built before.

We’ll probably spend the next couple months working out the bugs, but we’re almost to the finish line!

2025 Wrapped

To round out my personal updates, here’s a quick look at what else happened throughout the year.

• In 2024, I said I wanted to develop a writing habit. Thanks to my new role at work, I’m writing documentation almost every week. Now I just need that to translate that to this blog.
• This year we started an AI pilot program at work, and I’ve begun working with Cursor for the last few months. It’s been extremely helpful in certain respects, but working with a large legacy codebase presents some unique challenges. The wide variety of patterns and components, most of which we consider deprecated, tend to pollute the context. Next year I plan on devoting a big chunk of my time to improving the overall agent experience.
• In 2025 I read 15 books. That’s half the number I wanted to tackle, but a lot of those books were massive. This year I tackled the entirety of Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive series, as well as every other Cosmere related book I could get my hands on. I especially loved Yumi and the Nightmare Painter, one of Sanderson’s secret project books.
• Even though I didn’t get a chance to present in person this year, I delivered a handful of presentations this year in my team’s bi-weekly Tech Discussions. The majority of them this year centered around changes to our frontend tech stack.
• My wife and I traveled to Vermont in late October for some much needed rest. Highlights include apple picking in a picturesque orchard surrounded by mountains, visiting the insanely popular Vermont Country Store, and eating at a restaurant on top of a glass studio and beside a waterfall. Vermont was absolutely gorgeous, and their commitment to farm to table is next level.
• In addition to continuing my regular exercise habit, I’ve begun daily mindfulness meditation. I am an eternal skeptic, but I am noticing improvements in my mindfulness, especially around reacting to what have traditionally been triggers for me. I’m going to try to stick with it throughout the next year and see if I notice any further changes.
• I began illustrating again. Specifically, **I illustrated a new drawing daily for an entire month. **Illustration was the first creative hobby I fell in love with. I often dreamed about becoming an artist when I was a kid, and it’s the main reason I got into graphic design. I really haven’t drawn since becoming a software engineer, and this creative exercise was both energizing and healing.
• Finally, I have begun the process of a long-overdue website renovation. Coming in 2026. Probably.

2026 Goals

In 2026, I want to focus personally on continuing what’s working and experimenting with creating new creative habits. Professionally, I am looking at one of my most ambitious years ever.

• Complete and support micro frontend delivery.

  We have a presentation scheduled in February to signify the roll out of our micro frontend workflow, and we have several teams already in line to try it out. I anticipate a big portion of my time in 2026 will be devoted to supporting these projects. At the same time, I will be delivering and editing documentation, as well as establishing governance guidelines to help teams that are unfamiliar with frontend practices.

• Frontend democratization project.

  The documentation and governance work for the micro frontend architecture will be the first step in creating a complete org-wide frontend system. I envision a future where teams can spin up new frontend integrations with the push of a button, with accessible and flexible components, utilities that make interfacing with custom backends a breeze, and scaffolding tools that integrate seamlessly with AI agents to supercharge

• Deliver a talk at our React meetup.

  This year I am going to make giving an in-person talk a priority. I am working on a presentation right now, and I hope to be able to get on the schedule for a React meetup that takes place at our Plano office. Either way, I plan on posting a written version of this talk as well.

• Commit to creativity experiment aimed at developing creative habit for 90 days.

  I’m attempting to create one new thing a day for the first 90 days of 2026, whether it’s an illustration, a guitar riff, or some UI interaction that’s rolling around in my head. I’ll start with two to three days a week, 30–45 mins per session. Then each week I’ll reflect on what I did (or did not do). I want to develop a sense of creative identity without any kind of self-imposed pressure, so I’m trying to keep the structure loose and informal. I’m hoping this will turn into something interesting.

• Read 16 books.

  I think the important thing here is that I want to continue my reading habit. I’m really enjoying the fantasy and sci-fi genre, and I’ve really gotten into Brandon Sanderson. Now that I’ve read literally everything he’s ever written, I need to branch out and see what I can find.

• Meditate and exercise daily.

  Finally, I want to continue my meditation habit, 20 minutes a day. For exercise, I want to continue weight lifting and walking. This has been a combination that really works for me, and I’ve grown to enjoy my exercise time.

Something I’m doing different this year is setting a calendar reminder to review all of my goals monthly. Hopefully this will keep me focused on what my priorities are, and, if anything changes, I can easily update my goals and note the reason for the change.

Signing Off for Now

2025 was exhausting for me on many levels, but I’m proud of the work I accomplished and thankful for my family, especially my wife, for their love and support. I’m also grateful that I was able to meet the sweetest dog I’ve ever known, even if it was for such a brief time.

I’m taking the last two weeks of this year to rest, reflect and regroup. I hope you are able to do the same. Until next time!