Is it too late to make a yearly reflection?
It feels more natural to do a yearly review today, at the start of spring, than in the middle of winter. Springtime should be the actual start of the year, if you ask me.
A lot has happened in the last twelve months. I finished university (again), I started getting involved in different communities in Vienna, I got a new job, I started doing public speaking, I joined the nicest book club in town, among other cool things. Not that having done any of these things made me a different person, but rather I was able to do them because I started feeling like a different person.
In a sense I feel more grown up. I can feel adulthood setting in. It’s a weird feeling. I feel more in charge of my own fate, I feel less like looking around for valid ways of living to implement in my own life and more like living my own way without wondering how other people would do things.
The irony is that, precisely because of that, life also feels more childlike. I am more focused in experiencing life how I want to experience it and really enjoying it to the fullest. Not that I didn’t enjoy my life before, but I now allow myself to fully stand by the way I feel about things without thinking that others might know better, or that there might be a better way to live, or whatever other dumb thought my brain would always come up with.
Maybe turning 35 helped. I can’t believe I’m 35 now.
But it’s not just the age. I’m convinced it’s also the result of the inner work that I’ve been doing over the last years. The work of defining my values and learning to stand up to them, of deciding what I want out of this life and going for it, of recognizing that I have needs and learning to listen to them, of opening myself and being vulnerable. It hasn’t been always easy, but it has definitely been worth it.
Even though it’s work that I’ve been doing for longer than a year and that will probably never be completely finished, something shifted during the last 12 months. I feel different.
The year ahead
This feeling of childlike adulthood is pushing me to do stuff.
I want the upcoming year to be a year of doing, of creating, of transitioning. Transitioning from planning into implementing, from waiting into taking action. I want to live up to my values and align my everyday actions to my convictions a little bit more each day. I want 2026 to be my year of integrity.
That’s how this site came to be. With so many things that I want to do and projects that I want to give a try in the coming months, I wanted a place to write about them, to reflect on them, and that allowed me to share them with others. Besides, I’ve always enjoyed writing and storytelling, and documenting stuff that I do and ideas that I have gives me the perfect excuse to practice.
Most of the projects and initiatives that I’m interested in fall into one of three main story arcs:
I’m convinced the way we think about work, specially in engineering and high-tech, needs to fundamentally shift into a more human approach.
I believe in the power of civil society to transform the world and to create better living conditions for everyone.
I believe in the magical touch that community and storytelling have for creating spaces where people from all walks of life can come together, feel at home, exchange experiences, and find like-minded people to create new initiatives.
Those are the kinds of things I want to work on in the coming twelve months. The classification is not very specific on purpose, it’s just broad enough to help me filter out the noise. This is the first time that I set up an intention this way. I’ve tried other forms in the past and I never felt so comfortable with any of them as I do with this one, so I’m fairly curious to know where it takes me and how much I actually get done in a year.
I guess I’ll find out soon enough.
