Reflections on 2025: A deeply personal letter
2025 was the year I learned who I am when everything else is stripped away. 2026 is the year I build with that clarity.
This is my last correspondence of 2025 - a deeply personal letter to you, reflecting and looking back at this year.
There's a moment in everyone's journey where you realise you're not the person you were a year ago. For me, that moment came on my birthday - turning 37, sitting in a spa, trying (and failing) to do a digital detox, and finally asking myself the question I should have asked months ago: who have I actually become in 2025?
The honest answer is complicated. I'm not who I was in January. But I'm also not the person I thought I'd be by now. I'm something different. Someone harder. Someone clearer. Someone more relentless.
Let me take you through how I got here.
Why I learned who I'm not
In September 2024, I did something I swore I'd never do. I became an employee (after my 2-year stint as Head of Design between 2017 and 2019).
After building for over a decade, I took a corporate role as Head of Brand Marketing. Six-figure salary. Stability. All the things most people are chasing. By February 2025, I was fired unexpectedly. Let's just say it was unjustified and I'm unable to say much due to an NDA.
In the moment, it felt like failure. Like I'd betrayed everything I believed in by trying to fit into a system that wasn't built for people like me. But sitting with it over the months that followed, I realised something profound: that firing was actually a gift.
Because here's what I discovered on the other side: