2025 was a turbulent year.

I was planing on writing this sometime in December but some unexpected changes to my job (more on that later) completely overtook my capacity to focus on writing.

That’s all been sorted now and with the holidays out of the way I’ve finally found some time to reflect on the past year and think about the year ahead.

While it was an eventful year there are 3 key areas which had the biggest impact on the year - my work, my health and fitness, and a couple of side projects outside of my day job.

Work

Things were good in the day job. I’d been taking a little bit of a back seat on day-to-day development and focusing more on bigger picture strategies and future planning. I’d been set some pretty large objectives as part of my career progression and made great progress towards them.

Then in October, after exactly 5 years and 1 day on the job, I was made redundant.

It came completely out of the blue and at one of the worst times of the year to be looking for work. This is the second time in my life I’ve been made redundant from a job but this time hit different. The world has changed significantly in the last 5 years and the job market is a completely different place than it was the last time I was looking.

I’d just spent the past five years wring Angular code with highly custom CSS in a well established enterprise application, but based on the job market everyone is looking for Next.js and Tailwind experts, because that seems to the flavour-of-the-month at the moment.

LinkedIn is like a minefield of jobs which all sound the same with hundreds of applicants within a day of being posted (if what LinkedIn premium tells you is true) and the feed is full of ads for A.I. tools that will offer to apply to hundreds of jobs on your behalf! Where’s the humanity?!

Friends who knew I’d been made redundant joked how I can relax and enjoy the time off over Christmas, but I can safely say that finding a job is a full time job in itself. I was spending all day everyday optimising CV and job searches to try and beat the bots and algorithms that were working against me. Somewhere between 60-80 applications over a 2.5 month period with most being ignored or receiving automated responses.

It was demotivating and stressful and this is one of the reasons why writing this post had to wait.

Honestly, I wouldn’t wish redundancy on anyone and I know some of my ex-colleagues who were in the same boat are still struggling to find work. Times are hard, so if you know anyone in a similar situation, reach out and check in on them.

…

Fortunately I managed to find a new role and started in the new year. It allowed my to relax and unwind a little over Christmas and find some reasons to actually celebrate the end of the year.

Health

Back in April I took my kids to their taekwondo grading. They’d been learning for about 6 months and were just about to get their yellow belts.

I noticed one of the other students in the class at the grading who just received his green belt. He looked like he was in his 40’s too and although he looked physically fitter than me, it made me think that I could probably give it a go too.

A week later and I’m at my first taekwondo lesson.

I instantly loved it. I was the oldest in the class, a complete beginner, standing alongside my children and a number of other teens who were way ahead of me, and I had to prove to myself that I could do it.

I don’t get a lot of cardio exercise in and I suffer from some mild arthritis in my hand so an hour and a half of martial arts was quite a challenge at first, but I persisted and haven’t missed a lesson yet.

I’m now on my 7th kup (green tag) and in December I was awarded Student of the Year for the over 12’s class! Definitely one of the highlights of the year.

With Taekwondo being a big focus of 2025, weight training took a bit of a back seat in the second half of the year which I’m keen to get back into in 2026. The arthritis in my hand has been getting a lot better and I can almost make a proper fist now so gripping a weight lifting bar has been getting easier but I still need to work on my grip if I want to start pushing a little heavier.

Side Projects

I didn’t take on my software development side projects in 2025 and I don’t plan to take on many in 2026 either. My newsletter took a complete back seat but right at the end of the year I decided to push a new edition and rebranded it to “Frontend Mind.” The new name should give it a little more focus and encourage me to write more often.

Outside of the day job I mostly focused on my music. 2025 was quite an eventful year which I’ve written about on my music website soulconcept.uk. The highlights were playing at an in-person Twitch event and pressing my debut album on to vinyl.

I’ve got a lot of unreleased music in the bag which I’m hoping to release next year either independently or with one of the labels I’m already affiliated with.

2026 Goals

And so onto 2026.

I’ve never really been one to set resolutions which I track. Mostly just vague wishes of things I’d like to do or achieve, but this year I’ve given it some thought and come up with a couple that are attainable and measurable.

1. Progression in Taekwondo - Based on my current progress I predict that I should be able to reach my blue belt (3 above current). I’m also planning on entering at least one competition this year with hopes to bring home a medal.
2. Read at least 12 books - Every year I take part in the Good Reads reading challenge and I always end up failing it. This year I’m aiming for at least one book per month and I’m using a habit tracker to keep me on track.
3. Start writing again - Since I’ve rebranded my newsletter, its time to start writing in it more often. I wont commit to a strict schedule just yet but will aim for one a month.

Hope you all have a great year ahead.