Editor’s note: didn’t have time to publish this, and publishing it later than now would make me never publish it, so here goes!

I find myself in Berlin, visiting family. This past week, I re-read my last year in review and decided to repeat the format for this year.

Meta: tech/website experiments

I used to make these elaborate websites (like this one) to practice with web design techniques or new ways of creating websites. I don’t find myself having time for that anymore – but maybe I should pick it up again.

The 2025 version of those experiments would definitely be experimenting with AI. But even though AI is pretty powerful, it also leads to very generic output – I would still appreciate making the right parts by hand. I wouldn’t just dump my favorites into Gemini 3 and dump that infographic you see all over the web now here. That wouldn’t be me.

Perhaps another 2025 way to create these sites would be to use Figma Sites or Framer – but after a lot of reflection, and trying out those tools, I find the SaaS nature with specific content limits and ever-changing prices to not be a great fit for the type of websites I want to create for myself.

I don’t subscribe to a future where websites are locked to specific tools, with no export options, and your site staying online is tied to a permanent subscription. Over time, this just becomes too expensive, especially for sites that are meant to stay online – such as a “best of”.

In general, in 2026, I’m planning to invest more in solutions like Craft — or perhaps open-source CMS’es that are not tied to VC investments if I can find a good one.

Limited intake

This year I became a dad. I also rebooted my design agency. Combining these, one of the things I was mostly lacking was time. As a result, I didn’t actually watch that many movies or checked out as many games as I used to.

In general, I really had to dig a bit to know which movies I watched or which games made an impression on me. Music-wise, I really didn’t listen to that much new albums. I didn’t spend a whole lot of time on YouTube or with a new hobby like other years. Perhaps this will change as our child grows older… or maybe that’s just my new reality.

Personal interests

Personal finances

Last year I wrote about an interest in personal finance. This interest has kind of settled down as I have a plan about what I want to do with my personal finances. Overall I am holding stocks of companies that I see creating more value over time, which have a stable ground when it comes to their assets and IP.

In the more risk-heavy category, I am specifically keeping an eye on $FIG as a possible investment. I already have a small position and I am looking closely at the right moment to increase it.

Politics

What came back from previous years was an interest in politics. This year had both the Belgian elections, the Trump global trade show and even ended with Belgium playing a role in the global political discussion with Euroclear. I keep being interested in knowing what’s going on in the world.

One thing that bothers me is that I am not putting in enough time to understand the local context and specifically news from Latin America.

My resolution: understand the country and the surrounding LATAM context I live in more. Read more news and local magazines in Spanish.

Travel

I went to Belgium three times this year, mixing business trips with time for family and friends.

The first time going to Belgium I went skiing in France with a few friends. Getting there with an electric car added a few hours to our trip, but we made it. It was good to be back on the snowboard after more than ten years of not snowboarding at all. It really is like biking – you do not forget how to do it. I have some thoughts about safety (see the Sports section below) but overall I really enjoyed it.

Around that time I gave a talk about designing with AI, which kind of became the theme of the year. This guide on our agency website got a good response on LinkedIn and kicked off the marketing year for Obra.

In May I visited Barcelona for the Svelte Summit conference. I also visited Belgium, this time for a business focussed trip & spending a first work day in real-life with the first long-term Obra collaborator.

Up until now, the travel was mostly business focussed, but I also did some trips for leisure. In my year-in-review post for 2024 I wished for some more travel inside Mexico and this came true:

• we travelled to La Paz in Baja California for our “babymoon” (the last holiday without a child in your family).
• Later, when our child was born, we drove to Acapulco – a first longer trip with the baby. The five hours drive went well, but Acapulco itself not in the best state. I probably wouldn’t recommend it unless you just want to stay in your hotel and enjoy the beach. But that’s not exactly my style of travelling.

In December – now – I am on a longer trip (see the last post about this). The best part so far was showing our kid to family; and a little Obra team dinner.

My travel resolution: take a big trip before our baby turns 2 years old. It is still realistic to go to on a bigger trip with a 1 year old, while if we ever have two toddler-aged children for example it would become more difficult organisation-wise.

Work

I chronicled my work life on this blog enough already – working on the first year of my building my agency (again) has been very satisfying.

If you are interested, you can peruse the blog archives with the Obra Studio tag to read what happened. In short, I am establishing a boutique design agency from Mexico, with a team and client base in both Europa and the US.

My work resolution: keep working on making Obra Studio a succesful agency

Side projects – Shadcn/ui kit

Our Obra shadcn/ui UI kit was duplicated over 25,000 times. At this point, we’re also using it in 2 real projects, so I am hesitant to even call it a side project anymore. It’s been an unexpected success.

Where to take this: keep growing the kit as an open source project while using it in commercial projects

Side projects – Tacos y Tech

Tacos y Tech was an event for designers, developers and product managers where we would just meet up in a tacos place (with lots of seating) to talk tech.

A typical event would look like this:

We organised Tacos y Tech 8 times throughout the year (6 regular events and 2 invite-only “special” events). We learned a fair bit about organising a low-key repeatable event to bring the local design/dev community together.

Where to take this: I am thinking about not doing anything with the events in 2025; they take time and I didn’t get out of it what I wanted (i.e. find talented designers & devs in Mexico)

An office

Lately I’ve been wanting to find an office.

The reason I want an office is to be able to work together with collaborators in the same place. A secondary reason is also having focus in my work days.

While I truly believe in remote work as the main way of working for a company, I’ve always liked having a hybrid strategy where people can meet in real life. Getting to know each other as a team gives a new dynamic to the work that otherwise wouldn’t exist.

In my hub strategy, I have 2 hubs: Mexico City and Belgium (the triangle Antwerp/Brussels/Ghent is small enough to be considered “a hub”).

Lately I’ve been scouting co-working places as well as private offices to find the right environment to work in.

What’s on my mind is having a place we can customize to our liking with design posters, some place we can lock up where expensive things like monitors can stay safe; a place you want to come to instead of have to go to. I haven’t found the right spot yet, but I will be investing more time in this search in 2026.

Music

The amount of new music I checked out is embarrasingly low. I’ve found that my media consumption habits already changed because of a lack of time. I listen to way more podcasts, because you can do that while doing light sports or during a walk with the baby.

The music highlight of 2025 was going to Corona Capital in Mexico City for one day which featured Queens of the Stone Age, Kaiser Chiefs, Foo Fighters and Franz Ferdinand on the same night!

My top albums I liked where Tropicoqueta by Karol G en Als het neerstort by Belgian artist Simon. According to Spotify I listened to 3,5 hours a day of music; but I think most of that was just background music while working. I wanted to consciously listen to new albums and didn’t get to that resolution.

My music resolution: try to consciously listen to new releases.

Year’s favorite: Queens of the Stone Age

Movies

I feel like I totally missed out on movies this year. If I scroll through the IMDB releases of 2025 I feel I haven’t seen anything. I am missing mainstream releases but also a lot of indie European movies I used to watch. This week I got the chance to see The Secret Agent, which was great — but finding myself in the cinema seems to have become a rare thing.

I remember One Battle After Another in cinemas as my highlight of the year, but other than that, I didn’t watch much. Going to the cinema and having a newborn are two things that don’t really go together well. I did watch Frankenstein on Netflix, which was great.

In the beginning of the year I was a bit disappointed with Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning. A bigger miss was the Superman movie, which was horrible.

Looking back at my year in review of last year, I didn’t get to my personal movie resolution: dust off my projector and spend some more time watching quality movies. I’ll try again this year; on a positive note, the amount of cool movies to watch keeps growing this way.

Year’s favorite: Frankenstein

Movie resolution: look into a short-throw laser projector again, and watch some movies

Games

I found that my gaming habits changed in 2026. If I knew the first 2 hours of a game would be cool and it cost €50, I used to wait to buy the game on a sale – now I will just do it. A €80 game is still a bit of a stretch.

Admittedly, I bought a few too many games I’ve only played a few hours know, but I am happy to have had the experiences.

I have this vague business plan of possibly working on a gaming publication at some point in my life, but I don’t think it’s the right time. In October I started writing some game reviews and made some preliminary website designs for a project called “BeGamer”. I intend to use this publication as a sort of demo project as I change some of my business focus to website development.

As for the games themselves:

• I eyed getting the Switch 2 but didn’t buy it. When Hollow Knight: Silksong came out, I tried the original Hollow Knight on my Switch 1. I understand why it’s such a famous game now and I am happy to have played it (albeit I think I only got to 30% completion)
• Overall my PS5 has not been getting much playtime. I bought the THPS3+4 reboot and barely played it. My PS Plus subscription expired and the content on PS Plus just wasn’t good enough to renew it.
• I really enjoyed Mafia: The Old Country on PS5. It’s a short game so I was able to finish it in a few weeks despite having a newborn. I was impressed by the graphics and the story.
• One random indie game I enjoyed is Lost in Random: The Eternal Die. You can pick it up for cheap and it’s pretty good! It’s a roguelike game where you get stronger every run.
• I liked the Oblivion reboot for a while, but didn’t get very far again, since this is one of those time intensive games.
• When Hades II came out, I bought it and immediately played it. I finished the game – Steam says I have 45 hours logged and that’s probably the game I played most.
• I still really like playing Age of Empires 4; but I just didn’t have any real time to invest in it. I bought the latest DLC and should check it out more. Maybe pick up some competitive play.
• I really liked the episodic Dispatch. 100% recommended as a chill game (that is maybe more like a TV series)
• I’ve been watching some videos about Assetto Corsa: Rally and hopefully I can get back to having a basic sim racing setup in Mexico at some point. That seems more like a 2027 plan though.

Year’s favorite: Hades II

Gaming resolution: Keep checking out interesting titles, and maybe get into some competitive AoE4

Sports

2025 was not the best year for sports: I went biking a few times with the road bike but ultimately stopped using it in summer. Road biking is a lot of fun but also feels very unsafe in Mexico City.\

As a new dad, I am worried about getting into an accident and not being able to take care of my family. I have a similar feeling when snowboarding. With snowboarding (and mountain biking for that matter) you are mostly in control, whereas with road biking, you are sometimes in the middle of traffic, making it harder to control the situation.

I went running a few times but didn’t make a conscious effort to get into it.

Lately I picked up a Sunday habit of going in the “ciclothon” (in CDMX they free up the roads every Sunday for running and biking) with a more relaxed bike.

What I wanted to do is bring one of my bikes that’s still in Belgium to Mexico to enjoy the ciclothon (or some smaller bike adventures) with a cooler bike. However, I wonder if it’s worth the hassle or whether I shouldn’t just buy a similar bike in Mexico. Because there will also likely be times that I want to use the bike for fun in Belgium.

My resolution: find a safe way to enjoy adventurous biking. Find a fun bike to enjoy the ciclothon and some leisurely and relatively safe CDMX biking (around Chapultepec Park/Bosques for example)

Language learning

I stopped the Spanish classes with my teacher in the beginning of the year to focus on my business.

As I live in Mexico my Spanish is naturally getting better, but I feel it could use a boost by specific studying.

My goals:

• Get an official degree like B2, as a stepping stone to a better one (C-level)
• Find a (Mexican) news source in Spanish and read it consistently

Looking forward

For 2026 I am thinking about a year that is focussed on growing our family, and growing my business.

In 2024 ago I got married; in 2025 we got a first child; I think 2026 will be intense enough just running my business, taking care of my family and sometimes finding time for personal interests.

Vamonos!