I needed to get all the existential career stuff off my chest, but I also wanted to make sure to document what actually happened this year, since a huge benefit of this process is being able to come back and remind myself what I was doing in past years.

What got done

Big picture, professionally, I would say I spent the first half of the year worrying about AI and the future of Pegasus, and I spent the second half of the year ramping up on contracting work and keeping Pegasus running.

Here’s a bit more detail:

• I shipped 27 Pegasus releases—focused mostly on stability, tooling, and AI.
  • Highlights include: upgrading to Tailwind 4, adding AI-assistant tooling and MCP, major multi-tenancy enhancements, swapping Webpack for Vite, adding an integrated chatbot with agent support, streamlining the dev setup, and staying current with the latest AI chat and image models and best practices.
• I published 11 articles on my blog (not counting this one). Also mostly focused on AI.
• I published one new Django guide on using Django with Vite.
• I published 9 videos on my YouTube Channel, all focused on coding and AI.
• I built and launched LifeWeeks—a way to create a timeline of your life where every week is a little box. In the last year, more than 13,000 people have tried it.

• I completely rewrote my Chrome extension that shows Google Photos in your new tabs, after Google killed all the APIs it had been using.
• I released an open-source Django / Vite starter project.
• I vibe-coded many different projects to varying degrees of completeness. Most of these were small tools for myself or experiments I was playing with. They include:
  • A Django job board
  • A Stripe fee calculator
  • An AI-powered comic maker (not public yet)
  • A tool to notify me when new bookings are available on the South African National Parks site.
  • A library of little agent tools I’m using to automate workflows like moving blogs from GDocs to my website, and drafting Pegasus release notes.
• I started contracting with Peregrine, and helped build several AI features for them.

It’s easy to get caught up in the minutiae of the days and weeks and feel like I never make progress on anything, but looking back on this list it’s clear that I got a decent amount done!

Life outside of work

Our nuclear family continues to do well, and the boys—now five and seven—are easier, more fun, and more interesting than ever before. Out of nowhere Lockwood is now a near-fluent reader, and has a blossoming set of interests and friends, making me a relieved introvert dad! Victor learned to ride a pedal bike effortlessly, has started playing Nintendo with his big brother, and remains a joyful, hilarious, and mysterious alien creature.

Outside of our family it’s more of a mixed bag. There continued to be health issues, scares, and difficult events in our extended family. Thankfully, my body hasn’t declined further, which, at my age, I’ll take.

Our friend circle in Cape Town continues to improve. I’m slowly coming to accept that there won’t be something like the friendships I had in my 20s in my life for a while, and that’s pretty normal for this phase, regardless of where you live.

Travel this year was a usual highlight. Our main event was a seven-city trip to the US where we made it all the way to see my parents in Hawaii. The boys loved the snorkeling, and it was great for them to spend so much time with their grandparents. We also got to see cousins, uncles, aunts, and friends galore. One of the nice things about being so far away from most of our family is that everyone makes time for us when we come to visit. Separate from the big trip, we also had a great stay in Mauritius, a number of visitors to Cape Town, and several memorable weekends away.

I’m still trying my hardest to appreciate this period of my life and make the most of it.

Having kids who love spending time with me and are so full of life is a gift—even if it is also very tiring! I think of all the families I know that are heavily constrained by strict work hours and limited vacation time, and I feel incredibly grateful to be able to spend so much time with the boys while they still like me.

Through all the ups and downs of the career I’ve chosen, it’s hard to imagine anything that would make this freedom not worth it.

The family at the top of Lion’s Head. December 26, 2025.