2025 was awesome and you're not old
Some time ago, I wrote the following:
These two questions can drastically change your life.
Are you doing what you were born to do?
If you had won the lottery, would you still do what you do?
I often use some hypothetical exaggeration to make things more obvious.
Every small thing, every noise, any friction, or transient situation quickly becomes less relevant, giving way to a raw sense of what truly matters.
The answers to these questions can change over time, which is why you should keep asking them.
Up to this moment, I can confidently say I am doing what I was born to do.
I've been working as a Software Engineer since late 2005. When I started, I felt extremely energised, but I'm not entirely sure why.
To give more context to what my version of "energized" means: I would always look forward to coming back to the office the next day. I could work without any distraction for many hours, to the point I'd get lost in time. Work was rarely a burden.
By no means do I think I was a workaholic, but I enjoyed it so much that perhaps it could have been perceived as such.
Looking back, after being around 8 years on the road, I can clearly see that it happened less and less, and although I always loved what I did, that spark wasn't there anymore, at least most of the time.
Once I hit that point, I compensated for part of that perceived lack of energy by the necessity of growing and providing for my family, and just kept on going. I've never stopped learning and growing, but I started to think I was getting old, and that's why the spark wasn't there anymore.
I kept on taking bigger challenges. I had the opportunity to lead a few successful projects. Mainly having spent my career working for startups and small companies, I enjoyed the chaotic nature of it all, and it helped me stay alive.
If you're in that kind of environment, there's no shortage of challenges, and I was all over the place - in a good way - coding, servers, databases, everything in between and around it. This helped me stay alive and shaped who and where I am today.
Just "staying alive" didn’t feel right. I needed more. I felt carried by inertia rather than driven by purpose.
We can't deny that we are indeed getting older, and family takes up a good chunk of our time and energy, but I was rationalizing, convincing myself that it was the reason I was slowing down more quickly than I should.
Fast forward to late 2024, and I joined Laravel as a Tech Support Engineer. That was my first time working as a Tech Support Engineer. While working for Laravel was and is definitely the high point of my career, paradoxically, it also feels like a regression, a setback, considering I've been a Software Engineer my entire career.
I needed exactly that, not less, not more. It was the perfect dosage, the perfect prescription for my "staying alive".
I've never felt so energized. Since I joined Laravel, I feel more energized than when I started back in 2005.
This has been my thought for a long time. It's been on my LinkedIn since forever, and it keeps being true.
I am very passionate about startups and like to help teams translate great ideas into amazing software while shipping products that help as many people as possible.
And the "help as many people as possible" has been the central part of my work here at Laravel. I've been finding more and more joy in helping others, nonetheless, I see this as a transition season, a gateway to what is still to come, and I try to enjoy the "now" as much as I can without thinking much about what's to come.
2025 unfolded like never before. I did so many things I'd never done before, or even thought I was capable of doing.
Early in March, I took on what I consider the biggest challenge of my life to date. I'm a very shy and introverted person by nature, and I applied to speak at Laracon IN and was accepted. I dreaded it so much that I regretted it countless times before the actual conference.
I've never been to a conference as an attendee or speaker, and I've never spoken to an audience of more than a handful of people. Laracon IN had around 1000 people, and I remember seeing my watch show 120 bpm a few hours before it was my turn. Sixty minutes before my turn, I finally felt ready. I just prayed, asking not to mess it all up. It didn't need to be great. I just didn't want to get embarrassed and embarrass the people around me.
Although I was still nervous, I was able to enjoy it, and I believe I did not mess it up (at least nobody told me :))
In my last talk, I said, Talks are only a small part of great conferences, and I came to that truth at Laracon IN. Going to India in itself would be a lifetime experience, but that, combined with meeting other people of all backgrounds, is unmatched.
After Laracon IN, I decided to continue fighting my fear and also delivered a talk at Laravel Serbia (online), invited by a friend, Vlad, and later this year at PHP Conference Brasil 2025. Both experiences felt once again like the first time, but after the actual talk, it felt good. I could see I was improving, although there's still a long way to go.
2025 also gifted me with Laracon US 2025, which offered the same pros as other conferences, but we also had a wonderful time as a team, and I was finally able to meet in person most of my colleagues, people I had admired and followed for a long time. Like I said:
Laracon US 2025 was awesome.
Humbled to be surrounded by paramount talent 🫶
This blog post is not about my setbacks, personal achievements, or conferences.
It's about embracing fear, leveraging regressions, and welcoming setbacks. Having faith to see beyond paradoxical situations, as well as having faith to walk when you don't see anything ahead.
It's about taking the less obvious roads.
It's about being humble and accepting changes.
It's about accepting that I'm wrong more often than I'd like to admit.
Similar to the "how can you face your problems when the problem is your face" quote,
A very effective way to fix something is to admit there's something to be fixed in the first place.
I wasn't old (sorta). I just did not want to change.
O God, grant us the serenity to accept what cannot be changed,
the courage to change what can be changed,
and the wisdom to discern the difference.
Whishing you a wonderful 2026!
Photo by ewan bullock on Unsplash
