I hesitated to write this newsletter. Not because I had nothing to say, but because what I’m trying to communicate is difficult to put into words. I’ve genuinely struggled to explain what I experienced, learned, and implemented this year. So, I’m going to do the only honest thing: focus on the difficult parts.
My hope is that somewhere in my friction, you find something useful.
01A Reality Check
When I look back at what I started two years ago, it all feels small. My LinkedIn profile, where I began documenting my learnings and experiments, still struggles for traction. Most people would have quit after a year of no momentum. I did not. I kept publishing.
In 2025, I set a goal to reach 500 newsletter subscribers. I put in the hours. I reviewed and rewrote content, tried to figure out the social media strategy, and kept hoping that this time would be the breakthrough.
It never happened.
My profile reached 530 followers, but the newsletter stayed around 170. I would be lying if I said I never wanted to give up. There were days I mentally checked out and questioned my sanity. If you have noticed gaps in my publishing schedule this year, now you know why I missed several letters.
And it was not just the writing.
I have a YouTube channel where I publish heavily researched videos on topics like immigration and AI. These are not random opinions. Each video takes months. I do everything myself, including the script, research, and edit. No team. No external support. Everything you see online under my umbrella is me.
I had a goal to monetize YouTube in 2025. I failed. Not because the content was bad, but because I stopped. I stopped writing. I stopped editing. I stopped promoting. I shut down.
I also ran a one-man web dev agency. It was popular with new founders, and it paid the bills. After eight months, I shut it down, not because there were no clients, but because I did not enjoy it anymore. Simply put, I hated it.
Then there is dygres, my social media venture. It still has not seen the light of day. After two failed versions and an attempt to build a third, I had an intense reality check. I cannot build this alone, and current AI tools do not change that. It needs serious human capacity. I asked several experienced engineers and programmers for advice, and even conservative estimates put it in the tens to hundreds of millions to build and scale properly.
So, dygres is now on hold (again) but not abandoned.
Reading this, anyone would think that this sounds like a rough year of dreams falling apart, goals not being met and a hopeful (me) getting a reality check. If observed at the surface level then yes, it’s all true. It has been rough; I have failed in many areas and reality has given me a thorough thrashing.
But despite all that I have said, 2025 has been the best year of my life.
Why?
Because life is not lived by skimming the surface, it is best lived when you explore the depths of who you are, and who you are willing to become when things do not work the way you planned.
02Small Steps To Giant Leaps
This year I launched my personal website that I vision as a home for all my ventures and explorations. It is also my way of keeping myself accountable and realistic. Here is a little fact about it. I purchased the name Haphestus and set up a company three years ago. Then I did absolutely nothing with it for years.
Want to know why?
The first time I shared the idea with people close to me, it was met with ridicule and mockery. It had a major impact on my thinking. I was not the same person then that I am now, and I allowed other people’s reactions to limit my growth. I do not blame anyone but myself.
I am the captain of my ship.
Advice is optional. The decision was always supposed to be mine.
At some point this year, something clicked. I got tired of living inside other people’s opinions. I stopped caring about what the wrong people thought of my ideas.
After five months of working on the website alone, I found more traction in the last two months than I found in two years on LinkedIn. My LinkedIn engagement rarely touched 50%. My lowest on Haphestus is 60%. This is what I denied myself because I was afraid of what people would think. Imagine where it would be if I had committed three years ago.
Launching the website forced me to revisit every other project I have poured effort into.
One of them is a book I wrote and published on Amazon. It did not do well because my strategy was simple. Get it live and hope for the best. I am a professional marketer, and that is literally what I did.
If you stay on the surface, it sounds like a stupid decision. If you dig deeper, it becomes obvious what was really happening. I did not fully believe in the work, and I was afraid of rejection, ridicule, and failing publicly.
By not promoting the book or talking about it, I guaranteed myself failure. And what stings me is not that I failed but the fact that I put a lot of effort into it being authentic, I hired a talented artist to hand draw images, a proofreader to review the material and when it came time to do my part, I minimized the Amazon page and went out to frolic in the sand because I was scared of deep water.
This year I rewrote the entire thing. I had it reviewed by three different writers and received a strong stamp of approval. I plan to relaunch it on my website with a real marketing strategy behind it.
It is not meant for everybody. It is meant for people like me.
I mentioned that I stopped YouTube. Here is the real reason.
I was chasing arbitrary metrics. I was trying to make content that satisfied those metrics. It felt forced, and I did not believe in what I was making.
That is the partial truth.
The whole truth is that I was afraid of how I would be perceived, and what it could cost me. I worried that speaking up would make me lose my job or become unhirable. My biggest fear is ending up homeless. I have been unemployed before, and I know what that does to a human being. I have done everything I can to avoid that pain, and it has done nothing but hold me back.
About a month ago, I asked myself a question.
Is my life a balancing act, or a commitment to my vision?
I do not want to balance anymore. I do not want to live in fear of being broke, or worried about what people might say. Everything in life comes at a price.
Nothing in life is free. Nothing.
So, the final question is this.
Am I willing to go all in now, or am I going to renegotiate with myself again?
At some point, the training wheels have to come off. The backup plans stop being the plan. And all that remains is the vision ahead of you, or the comfort of employment behind you.
032026 And Beyond
Ambition is not illegal. But ambition restrained long enough becomes self sabotage.
There is no other way to put it.
I have spent the better part of this year rediscovering myself. It has been an uncomfortable analysis and when you face the truth, denial tries to grab the steering wheel.
None of this is easy.
But you know what is harder?
Living a life of compromise to avoid a future that is not guaranteed anyway.
For 2026, my plan is to be 100% unchained, and to make that real, not poetic.
- A consistent publishing cadence, no more disappearing.
- The book relaunch done properly, with strategy, distribution, and follow through.
- YouTube returns on a schedule, not on a mood.
I cannot control the future. But I can influence it with what I do right now.
Before you close this letter and go back to your life, take one minute and face the music.
What goal are you chasing right now? And what is your actual strategy to get there?
Not the version you tell people. Not the version you rehearse in your head.
The real one.
The one you can explain in a few sentences and execute on an ordinary Tuesday when motivation is gone.
If your calendar, habits, and spending do not match the story you are telling yourself, that is not failure.
It is feedback.
Adjust the plan. Choose one priority. Set a cadence.
Take the next uncomfortable step and let yourself be seen doing it.
If you want to, reply to this letter with two lines. The goal you are committing to in 2026, and the strategy you will use to make it real.
I wish all of you the very best for 2026!
