Fragments of 2025

I've maintained a solid habit this year: hitting the gym three times a week for an hour of cardio. Regular exercise and eating well really do bring that primal sense of happiness!

The endorphin rush and that light, energized feeling in your body? Absolutely incredible! No wonder everyone says your physique is your best business card—because working out genuinely takes serious time. 🤣

In October, I took my first international road trip abroad, driving through Silicon Valley to visit a friend and experience American time and lifestyle. While it cost me vacation days and money, I felt it was completely worth it because memories compound in value!

I've always believed that time has the ability to beautify memories, adding a filter to bitter ones and capturing the joy of happy ones.

I can vividly recall the excitement of being in Tokyo for the first time ten years ago, and I'm certain that years from now, I'll be able to relive the happiness of this American journey.

After discovering the indie hacking space last year, I've been attempting independent development for over a year now. In August this year, I launched my first product—a tool for writing chord charts in markdown called Chord Island. But it was too niche; hardly anyone used it.

I didn't have a distribution channel to keep the product visible. It created a small ripple during launch week, but by the following week, my GA4 graph had returned to silence.

That said, conducting user interviews introduced me to some seriously talented guitarists (the kind who can cover Marcin's compositions), which was a wonderful takeaway!

Independent development is like learning anything else—having access to others' experiences is one thing, but you really have to walk through it yourself and fall into the same pitfalls to truly learn. I think that's the relationship between knowledge and experience.

To build skills beyond development, I've consumed quite a few English books: My Indie Book, Snow Leopard, Obviously Awesome, The SaaS Playbook, and The Cold Start Problem. I'll write about relevant insights from future products later—execution comes first!

This year I also started taking lessons with a guitar teacher I've admired for a long time. During classes, I frequently discover small details I wouldn't normally notice on my own, and they're packed with knowledge. Within six strings and a body the size of your arm, there's genuinely an entire universe!

Moments like these really drive home the value of in-person instruction. Sure, with YouTube and AI these days, you can self-teach almost anything, but experience and the ability to "discover what you don't know"—that still requires a teacher.

Times like these also make me feel that all the hard work earning money finally has meaning: I can pay for lessons to learn what I want to learn.

My New Year's resolution for 2026 is the same as always: to hope that each year I don't make the same wish again.

So here's to that! 💪🏻