I turned 26 today.
That feels strange to say out loud.
For some reason, 26 sounds a lot older than I feel. In my head, I'm still somewhere around 18, still trying to figure out what kind of life I want, still making plans that feel much bigger than the person I am right now. But time has moved anyway, and here I am.
I've spent a lot of time being hard on myself. Too much time, honestly. Always thinking about what I haven't done yet, what I should have started earlier, how much further ahead I could have been if I had made better decisions. That habit has followed me for years.
This year, I want to do something different.
I want to admit that I've actually done well.
The last five years haven't been easy, but they've changed me. I've grown in my career. I've become more stable. I've built more discipline in my day-to-day life. I've learned how to take care of myself better, and I've started showing up with more responsibility in my personal life too.
A few years ago, a lot of things that are normal to me now felt far away. Living independently. Earning well. Having some maturity around work. Being less reckless with money. Quitting bad habits and sticking to that decision. Even small things, like learning how to cook properly and taking pride in running my own life, matter more to me than I used to admit.
I've also started building things outside of my job. They're still early. Some of them are messy. Some of them haven't made money yet. But the important thing is that I'm no longer just talking about wanting to build. I've started.
And that counts.
I'm not writing this as some self-congratulatory note. My life is nowhere close to where I want it to be. I still feel behind in a lot of ways. I still have ambitions that are so much bigger than my current reality that they almost sound absurd when I say them out loud.
But I think both things can be true at once.
I can be proud of how far I've come and still be restless about how far I have left to go.
That feels like the honest version.
At the center of it all, my ambition hasn't changed much. I want to build real wealth through things I create. I want freedom. I want scale. I want to build something that matters and do it on my own terms. I know I'm still early. I know I'm still small compared to what I want. But I also know this isn't a passing thought for me anymore. It's the direction.
So this next year feels important.
Not in a dramatic, life-changing, movie-scene kind of way. Just in the sense that I need to stop letting my goals live only in my head. I want this year to produce evidence. Real movement. Something measurable.
There are a few things I want to focus on.
I want to build income from software I own, not just from the hours I sell. I want to get more serious about reading and learning in a way that actually changes how I think. I want to keep getting better with money, cut the dumb spending, and create more breathing room for myself. I want to be more intentional in my relationships and not take the people I love for granted. And I want to stay close to AI, because it's clearly reshaping the world and I don't want to watch that happen from the sidelines.
More than anything, I want to become someone who follows through.
That's really the theme.
Less overthinking. Less waiting for the perfect time. Less romanticizing what I could do. More shipping, more discipline, more proof.
The next 30 days matter too. I want to finish what I'm building, get it in front of real users, clean up waste in how I work and what I spend on tools, and spend my time more deliberately. Not perfectly. Just deliberately.
I don't expect 26 to magically transform me. Birthdays don't do that. Nothing really changes just because the date does.
But I do like the pause that a birthday forces on me. It makes me look at my life a little more clearly. It reminds me that time is moving whether I use it well or not.
And when I look at my life right now, I don't feel finished, but I also don't feel lost.
I feel early.
That's a good feeling.
I've done enough to be proud of myself. I haven't done enough to relax. That's probably the right combination for this stage of life.
So here's to 26. To building seriously. To being less ashamed of ambition. To giving myself credit without getting comfortable. To making this year real.