With the end of the year, it’s time for another reflection.

Staying focused #

Overall, I’ve been much better about staying focused on various projects this year. One major contributor is not splitting my focus, and accepting that things take a lot longer than I expect. Whether it’s personal projects like thre AEPs, a new task at work, or a video game I want to play, trying to rush through leads to less satisfaction personally, and my accomplishments not being as deep on things as I’d like.

Farsi #

If I had to be honest, my Farsi may have actually gotten worse this year. I’m still trying to learn the language, but I’m not doing classes weekly as much anymore, and I dropped Children of Morta due to a bunch of work projects that made me work a few late nights.

I also haven’t really been watching Persian TV, which may be another contributing factor.

OSS: aep.dev #

aep.dev this year has been great! We finally published our 2026 specification, a culmination of several years of blood, sweat, and tears discussing API design.

This was joint effort from multiple people who were involved in the ecosystem, including Alex Stephen, Marsh Gardiner, Mike Kistler, David Gagne, and more. It’s a privilege to be a part of that ecosystem.

With the specification underway, I’m excited to move more into actionable territory, taking the spec to organizations to hear what they think.

Fitness #

Between 2024 and 2025, I’ve lost a couple pounds of fat, arriving at roughly 12% body fat (via dexa), which I’ve largely tracked for most of the year.

Keeping that percentage, I was able to even gain a couple of pounds from where I was at in the beginning of 2025.

At roughly 170lbs (via morning weigh-in), or 175lbs according to Dexa, I think I’m at the point where any more weight loss may result in loss of muscle that is undesirable.

Theoretically, advanced lifters can gain 3-4 pounds of mass a year, maximum. If I am able to gain even half of that while maintaining the current weight, I would be at 10.8% body fat, and would have achieved my goal.

So, my focus this year is to maintain, but try to gain as much muscle as I can.

I upped my protein intake temporarily to 1.8g / kg, but after I saw my Kidney’s health marker (EGFR) lower, I decided to lower intake back down to 1.8, and also go exclusively plant based (which research has shown has resulted in better kidney health overall).

The EGFR marker with creatinine is known to not be the most reliable alone as it generally increases linearly with protein intake, but nonetheless I wanted to be careful about overall health and not increase my protein intake unless it seems like my creatinine numbers can be maintained.

My bone density also significantly went down this year - I think it’s because I removed olympic lifts and heavy compounds such as deadlifts and squats. I plan to re-add these and check bone density afterward.

Piano #

A surprising win this year was Piano. Near the end of the year, I started practicing some holiday pieces after that Thanksgiving holiday. I’ve found that I can read pieces okay now, and generally play through a piece without much trouble, even if that is nowhere close to real speed.

I think It’s a matter of impetus at this point: just keep practing, and I should be a pretty good player and can sight read without issue by the end of the year.

Goals for 2026 #

  • Do 5 talks to evagnelize aep.dev (that would be a lot!)
  • Continue to play piano 10 minutes a day. I think I’m getting pretty good, so I’d like to keep that up.
  • Achieve 11% body fat (same as last year)
  • Gain a working knowledge of machine learning, and figure out how to meaningfully contribute to the ecosystem.
  • Become actually conversationally fluent at Farsi
    • Finish children of Morta.