My son was born on boxing day 2024, So as of writing this, I’ve been a dad for over year now. What a ride its been. I think this is going to be my 2025 retrospective blog in disguise.
I had so much anxiety going into 2025 knowing I was going to be dad. How do you juggle being a husband and father whilst also being a good employee and staying of top of work? And trying to stay fit and keeping trying to keep up with friends and family and just have a life generally?!
The answser is, with great difficulty and I already knew this. but living it out was humbling.
That being said. I think I did ok overall.
Family and friends
Keeping up with friends is much harder now. But I know my friends know this and and if anything I feel like they have made more effort to see me and my new family. When I do get to catch up it’s even more meaningful now.
Work
I got promoted to senior dev and I shipped a lot of new features for work in 2025. I really think i did some of my best work to date. I did my first tech talk on React 19 at a React Advanced meetup. Imposted syndrome still has not gone away and I still have a tonne of anxieties that I not working enough. Thankfully, i’m working with a really compassionate team that respects my work-life balance and have been really supportive in my fatherhood and juggling my
Self development
I still love coding and learning new things, I cant cram as much but I’ve been finding moments late at night between 9-11PM to hack around on things. I’m tired but have been extra motivated. I went hard learning about fullstack Cloudflare this year. The whole ecosystem fascinates me for some reason. I also got around to learning the some of the Tan stack ecosystem and really enjoying it. My ambitions to build my SaSS still hasnt gone away. I just cant seem to find that spark of a idea still. I’ll continue to hack in the meantime.