I'm writing this from Alicante, Spain, still processing the year that was.

I just turned 34, and as every year, I'm now reflecting on the highlights, challenges, favorite purchases, and impactful books of 2025.

This year was a year of extremes. Incredible joy and devastating loss. New beginnings and final goodbyes. I became an uncle and lost my father.

Here's my annual review of 2025.

The Year in Review

Started the year in Chiang Mai, visited Bangkok, enjoyed some massages and unlimited pad Thai. I can eat it all day.

January 11, we drove to Valencia to pick up our baby puppy Pixel, an Italian greyhound that brought a lot of joy to our home.

January 27-31, Marrakesh for saas.grouping. Lots of fun, workshops, activities, amazing food, and getting to know people I work with every day better. Coming from the padel court, I tried tennis and got absolutely demolished by Rewardful CEO Emmet. Lots of fun, and for the first time I tried a golf driving range and want to play golf sometime soon.

Did my first hiring interviews at Rewardful. Fotini excelled and became our partnerships and social media manager at Rewardful.

April 28-May 2, stayed in Mallorca, coworking, chatting, and doing some local sightseeing with Justas.

May 13-20, a Mediterranean cruise celebrating my mom's 50th and Isabella's mom's 60th birthdays: Barcelona - Tunis - Palermo - Naples - Livorno - Marseille - Barcelona.

Chatted quite regularly with my closest friends.

July: road trip for Isabella's birthday with her friends and Pixel. Granada, Cadiz, Sevilla, Cordoba. Isabella got her Spanish citizenship!

Bought a scooter, so much fun. It unlocks a new dimension and you see the world differently: more exciting, so much faster to move in the city, easy parking, and also lots of fun.

Early September, Lithuania - caught up with friends Kamile, Martynas, Justas, Egle, and Rokas, celebrated my mom's birthday, visited my dad for the last time.

September 12-14, did the first edition of a micro conference/retreat, grilled steaks, played poker with cigars, made homemade pizza, walked, chilled in the pool, and talked business, vibe coding, and making a living as online builders and makers. Ash, Edgaras, Janis.

End of September, moved to San Juan Beach, a much nicer area and a bigger apartment in a calm private neighborhood two minutes from the beach. Way more expensive, but I instantly felt a quality-of-life improvement.

End of November, visited Paris, sightseeing, eating good food, and entering the Louvre. Paris, even on cold and rainy days, still has its charm and is one of my favorite cities to visit. Unfortunately, my dad died when I was in Paris, so the stay wasn't as delightful.

In December, I flew to Lithuania for my dad's funeral. It was the most life-shattering moment and huge wake-up call to live. I wrote about the in-the-moment feelings and observations of losing a parent in detail here: In memoriam.

Drove to Calella for Christmas to stay with Isabella's cousins and aunts.

I'm very fortunate to be in excellent health, have a loving and supportive wife who's also my business partner, have curious and successful friends, live on a beach with lots of activities and a nearly perfect daily lifestyle. The death of my father, while devastating, reminds me to live today, to remember that tomorrow is not promised, and all we've got is this moment.

Welcoming Pixel.

Life in Alicante.

Golfing in Marrakesh.

Hiking.

Work and fun.

Cruise.

Cruise activities.

Cruise fun.

Daily life.

Lithuania.

Long walks with Pixel.

Mallorca, Spain.

Micro retreat with the boys.

Moved to San Juan Beach.

Palermo, Italy.

Paris, France.

Sightseeing in Pisa, Marseille, Palermo.

Pixel in 2025.

Spain road trip: Granada, Cadiz, Sevilla, Cordoba.

Staying active in 2025.

Team Rewardful at saas.grouping 2025 in Marrakesh, Morocco.

Highlights

Here are the highlights of 2025:

• My brother became a baby girl dad. So happy for him and excited to meet the new parents next year.
• New family addition - our Italian greyhound Pixel, who brings enormous joy to my life every day.
• I loved visiting Mallorca, Sevilla, Palermo, Naples, Granada, Vilnius, and Paris.
• Did a cruise for my mom's and my wife's mom's birthdays. Seven-day Mediterranean cruise: Barcelona - Tunis - Palermo - Naples - Livorno - Marseille - Barcelona.
• Road trip Alicante - Granada - Cadiz - Sevilla - Cordoba - Alicante for Isabella's birthday.
• Isabella got her Spanish citizenship!
• Did a quick workation with my best friend Justas in Mallorca - deep life topics, business, sightseeing, and eating!
• Did a 3-day retreat with Ash, Edgaras, and Janis - absolutely amazing, and it was therapeutic to spend some time with fellow builders.
• Flew to Lithuania for my mom's 50th birthday, celebrating with family and close friends.
• Moved to San Juan Beach - a quality-of-life upgrade, living two minutes from the beach.
• Bought a scooter - it unlocks a new dimension of freedom in the city.

Challenges

My dad unexpectedly and tragically died. I wrote a long-form piece from the trenches. It's the most alive I ever felt. Death is no joke and it's coming for you.

Fixed and messed up my right shoulder again. This time, unfortunately, I slipped on ice and fell while in Lithuania. It will take some time to recover, the last time took 6 months.

Visited and saw my dad alive for the last time in my life during my September Lithuania trip. I didn't know it would be the last time.

Achievements

Biggest achievement: getting fully comfortable with coding. I wouldn't be able to do it without AI coding tools, though. Jumped here and there and spent thousands on these tools

Tried Windsurf, Augment Code, Amp Code, Factory Droids, Cursor, Antigravity, Claude Code, Lovable, Replit, Bolt, Codex. Now sticking to VS Code + GitHub Copilot + Codex.

Due to heavy web development work, I invested in a 16-inch MacBook Pro (M4, 48 GB RAM) - absolute beast.

As in recent years, I spent mostly on convenience, travel, and food. Loving my lifestyle.

Reactivated dollar-cost averaging and investing in world indices, BTC, and ETH.

Life Lessons of 2025

Here's what I learned in this year of extremes:

Be mindful that everything around you is someone's life work. True excellence is always recognized and respected. It can't be faked. You have to do it for the sake of the craft.

Make reading your default activity. Learning and exposing yourself to condensed valuable information will enrich you more than anything else. Even if you don't fully understand what you're reading, over time you will. Reading has a higher ROI per minute than any other activity, and it compounds fast.

Start at the end. I realized that working backwards will show all the gaps you couldn't even think about in the initial planning phase. Writing a book? Start from the cover and Amazon listing page. Starting a software product? Start from the most valuable user flow and get to value fast.

Only focus on the next stepping stone in front of you. Reading "Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned": the authors talk a lot about serendipity and stepping stones that may give us some hints and insights. Just follow the breadcrumbs and find the next stepping stones. How? Follow curiosity and interestingness.

Move faster. Action produces feedback. So if we know we need to find stepping stones and test ASAP if they lead to dead ends and turn back ASAP when choices and branches appear, moving fast is the way to go!

Don't get too concerned with small daily problems that have no significance in the long term. Make a firm decision, acknowledge your disturbing emotions and move on. Whenever I find myself overthinking life choices, I listen to or read about history and founders, and it always helps me put things into perspective and be more long-term oriented.

Move in silence. Gather information, make alliances, do your homework and when the time comes, take massive action. It may take a while, but the opportunity will come and all the difference will be in preparation.

All is noise. Build a real product. It will be so much easier to sell.

There's a different type of tired from joyful exercise like basketball or padel. It's the kind of tired where no matter if you win or lose, you feel accomplished because you gave it all, you were in the arena, and all that mattered was being on the court and playing possession after possession.

Routines might be overrated. You live only once. You can choose to live abundantly. Lower expectations, be curious, get lost. Savour life.

You already have the tools you need. You already know what you need to do. No more excuses, just do it.

No one is watching. You are not famous and probably won't be, so do it for the craft. Do it for the joy of doing it. I discovered a golf driving range while in Marrakesh this year and loved it. A couple of Aperol Spritzes, a bunch of goofy coworkers, and I had a blast.

Most people are good people. I got to meet people from many countries, and I traveled to 50+ countries, hundreds of cities, and I can tell you that it's not a specific place - just a small percentage of humans are idiots no matter the place. Most people are good people. But there is a very small percentage of people who can ruin your life, you must actively monitor your environment and cut them out instantly.

Building a personal brand may be overrated. Signal > noise. If you build a persona and business dependent on being active and feeding the algorithm daily, what happens if you don't want to show your face anymore, the algorithm changes, or you want to sell? Build an interest-based brand instead. Go into niches and play games you can win.

Always invest in the latest technology. Embrace tools, workflows, new ways of thinking, or you will get stuck with square wheels when people are driving race cars and crossing oceans in airplanes. It may not always work, but when it does, you will get the 100x return and decades of edge over your competition.

Speed and decisiveness are some of the highest leverage skills. Move fast, gather feedback, trust your gut.

You have zero excuses left not to live your best life. Now with AI you're a few questions away from getting what you want. If you get stuck and are willing to keep asking questions, you will get what you want.

You must understand 100% of your business to get the full advantage and be able to move fast. If you can control it from bottom to top, you can't be stopped.

It will take time. You may want to make excuses and sugarcoat it when talking to people, but the only way to win is to play long-term.

Favorite Books of 2025

• Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned: The Myth of the Objective by Kenneth O. Stanley
• Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don't Make Sense by Rory Sutherland
• Thinking in Systems: A Primer by Donella H. Meadows
• Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant by W. Chan Kim & Renée Mauborgne
• Obviously Awesome: How to Nail Product Positioning so Customers Get It, Buy It, Love It by April Dunford
• The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World by David Deutsch

Favorite Movies & TV Shows of 2025

Movies:

• F1
• Frankenstein
• Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning
• Avatar 3
• One Battle After Another
• Bugonia
• Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery

TV Shows:

• Silo
• Ted Lasso
• Your Friends & Neighbors
• Severance
• From

Favorite Software & Tools of 2025

• AI SDK
• Mastra
• Neon DB
• Vercel
• Next.js
• Resend
• Claude Opus 4.5
• ChatGPT
• Typefully
• HTTPie
• Figma
• Granola
• Descript
• CleanShot X
• Screen Studio
• Cloudflare
• Visual Studio Code
• Cursor

It's quite therapeutic to reflect and review everything that happened in one year. This was a year that taught me the most important lesson of all: life is finite. My dad's death was a brutal reminder that we don't get unlimited time.

Thank you for reading. Hug your parents.

Here's to happy and healthy 2026!

If you are interested in my previous annual reviews, check my life lessons of 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2023, and 2024.