Today marks my 1 year of staying out of the job market. But it feels like it was only yesterday I had that offboarding call with my TL.

That’s 1 solid year of not being in the corporate environment - no daily standups, no sprint retros, no 1/1 alignment meetings, no grooming sessions, no slack messages, no calendar invites, and most importantly (also unfortunately) no more PR comments to attend to, specially on an ASAP basis.

Did I also mention no more constant context switching? Yeah well I will be damned.

But also, the credit should go where it’s due - long live the corporate world!

That aside, I’m still unsure on what part I truly want to focus on professionally in 2026. I will ofcourse continue to do what I’d been lazily doing the last 2 quarters of 2025, i.e. build apps (MVPs). Maybe focus a little more on research & revenue this time around. Or maybe I’ll have to pivot, maybe not. I don’t know.

2025 was ok. I was able to push maybe a dozen apps to production, but most of them died without ever seeing the light of the day. In hindsight, they never had the support system in place to succeed anyway. One or two gained some traction - not a lot - just enough to be able to close the year with around $500 in monthly non-recurring (gross) revenue. Maybe that’s where I will continue to push. Aim is to, and dare I say, 6x the revenue by last quarter of 2026, but no promises - I have nothing to prove and frankly hustle culture can die for all I care.

One thing I really want to focus on is my health though. More physical activities, and more treks. That’s one promise I certainly intend to keep. Move while my legs can. Sad part here is that I now require minimum 2 weeks of rest instead of the standard 2 to 3 days off when sick. Like wtf is even this? And wtf is my immunity doing? Guess it’s time for some RCA.

Anyway.

Here’s to 2025 & the rest of 2026.