My 2025 in Review

Tiago Valverde

2025 was yet another intense and meaningful year of my life. I grew professionally inside a large and ambitious banking project, pushed my physical limits in MTB trails, built and reshaped personal systems to improve my productivity, and continued carving the person I want to become. As a partner, developer and athlete.

It was a year full of wins, failures, growth and identity shifts. This is my attempt to capture what shook me in 2025.

Work & Career

Major Projects I Worked On

Throughout 2025, I was part of one of the largest Canadian banks, working on a large scale configuration-as-code ETL and data platform framework.

I was involved in:

  • Building and maintaining core components of the ETL framework (data connectors, adapters, ingestion interfaces)
  • Supporting the development of dynamic, JSON-driven REST APIs
  • Building robust MSSQL code for fast data processing
  • Support the go-live of two projects using the framework
  • Helping onboard new developers and acting as a reference point for debugging, deployments and system understanding

Given it was a new team, which grew rapidly and having to learn a lot of internal tools and processes across the organization, forced me to level up quickly.

Biggest Wins

  • Became a trusted contributor on a mission critical banking platform
  • Strengthened my Java, Spring and Maven expertise under real production scenarios
  • Acquired experience in ETL pipelines, specially, how early data governance sets up the project for success
  • Maintained a great output despite pressure, complexity and ambiguity at times.

Challenges & Failures

  • The usual moments of imposter syndrome when ramping up on unknown territory
  • Difficulty in balancing full time work, cycling, working out and ambitious side projects.
  • Communication, a constant area of growth for me

These struggles taught me the importance of systems, routines, pacing and mental health awareness.

Side Projects & Creativity

Side Projects

2025 was a year of experimenting with anything related to AI and Automations:

  • I built an audio to text publisher proof of concept, using ChatGPT Models
  • Missing the Ruby syntax, I started creating a Rails 8 boilerplate codebase to use in my side projects
  • Lots of experiments with local models using Ollama, as well as automations with n8n in my home lab

Most of these projects were not aimed at completion/perfection, but were more purposed at learning and experimenting.

Writing, Reading & Learning

Even though I'm a big advocate of Obsidian in the past few years, I reverted my note taking, specially my daily journaling to a analog/physical notebook. Journaling has helped me immensely, mentally, in 2025, and I will double down on that in 2026.

In an attempt to avoid doomscrolling and social media, I started reading more often again. I figured that beyond my attempt to avoid unproductive activities in my day to day, I could use reading to become a better communicator, and possibly learn a thing or two. I decided to jump into classic novels over non-fiction books as I find those less interesting to read nowadays.

In 2025, I read the following books or articles:

Sports, Health & Adventure

Mountain Biking

2025 marked a major shift in my amateur career as an athlete :D

  • Competed in two race series at Kelso. The MTB and CX series
  • Won the Intermediate Category in the MTB Series
  • Made 3rd place overall in the Sport category in the Cyclocross (CX) Series, but there were far better riders than me in this series. I was just more consistent and completed more races.
  • Improved climbing power, race pacing, technical handling
  • Built confidence through discipline and consistency
  • Was able to power through fatigue, mental fogginess, surpassing my own perceived limits.

MTB is becoming one of the most grounding and motivating forces in my life.

Health & Fitness

In 2025 I struggled with consistency. I reduced significantly strength training, even though I invested in a home gym. I also struggled in maintaining a good diet.

Life, Family, Growth

Big Life Events

We got engaged. We're planning a small wedding and prioritizing other things over the ceremony itself. But that decision set the tone for the rest of the year. One of closeness and supporting each other. It marked a full commitment to investing in growing our family and future.

More than that, it changed me. I became more fully myself with her, and I started trying to be more helpful, to think more about her needs and not just my own. It's also the reason I decided to look back at my personal issues and face them instead of avoiding them. The engagement wasn't just a milestone; it was a turning point in how I approach everything else.

We also welcomed Koby to our family, an energetic sheltie who has brought unexpected joy and chaos in equal measure.

Personal Challenges

  • Worked on mental health and social energy. Plainly, decided to start facing it instead of putting it in the back of my mind.
  • Experienced frustration with my lack of mental discipline, when it comes to social media and doomscrolling.

A lot of the growth this year was quiet, slow and internal.

Memories & Adventures

  • Unexpected joy from woodworking
  • Countless MTB rides and exploration
  • A 10 day roadtrip to the USA
  • Lots of hiking across Halton and Oakville parks
  • The usual annual Tiny, On trip to enjoy the beach and sunsets

Lessons & Looking Ahead

What 2025 Taught Me

  • Consistency beats intensity
  • Systems matter more than motivation
  • I perform best when I respect my mental limits
  • Communication is a skill that deserves deliberate practice
  • Reinforcing the idea that daily action compounds faster than overplanning

Closing Thoughts

2025 was not flashy, but it was foundational. I worked hard, learned constantly, failed often, and grew quietly. I'm entering 2026 more grounded and more honest with myself.

Here's to another year of becoming more.