My Plans for 2025
The past year has been a mix of challenges, lessons, and hard choices for almost every aspect of my life. A lot happend. I moved to another country, met new friends and new collegues, started new projects. In short, the phrase “making a fresh start” describes my 2024 in every possible meaning. Now I want to reflect and talk about my plans for coming 2025.
How was it?
2024 was full of everything :)
Life lessons
My business has always been oriented on the global market. I am one of those guys who’s been working remotely long before it became mainstream. So after the COVID and what was happening in Russia since 2022 I’ve decided to leave Russia permanently. I could allow myself to leave everything and never look back, but I feel bad for those who have strong ties because the history repeats itsef again and it won’t be pretty.
In late 2023 I moved from Russia to Spain, as many “new wave” immigrants I consider Spain to be a transit point in my journey, however this country has grown close to my heart for the past year. Among all the places I’ve traveled, Spain stands out as one of the best places to live, so If I have family I consider to move here.
Lesson 1: Flag theory
For a long time the idea of having multiple “save points” around the world has been somewhere in my thoughts, but only after I’ve decided to change my status from “Tourist” to “Resident” I started to research this topic and found out that the “Flag Theory” has been around since 70s. In short, the Flag Theory is a personal risk management strategy that minimizes goverment influence on your life and assets. You don’t have to be rich to build your individual “flag strategy”. Think about it, but beware that the term “Flag Theory” has become a marketing tool for shady companies.
Lesson 2: All assets are ephemeral except your health & skills
There are only two things you can always bring with you - your health and your abilities. Everything else may be out of your control. I won’t ellaborate here, but I say that I’m investing in both, and I am not saying that everything else is not significant. So coming year, I am going to invest more in sports, recreation and self-development.
Business & Work
Most of my business & work revolves around technology. In 2024 I’ve got new contracts as a software engineer and met a lot of new interesting people. While I am getting on my feet I don’t have spare time to start new ventures, so the next year I’ll be focusing on the contract projects. Also, I feel this is a perfet time to learn something new.
Except some experiments, I didn’t have enough time to start my own projects. In the coming year I feel that I am able to realize at leat one idea. I won’t tell the details here, but in general - I had a succefull experiments with AI-powered interfaces, so I plan to finish a new web engine, and cover at least one specific use case related to b2b commerce. This time I won’t build the project for sale, I think in the direction of “white label” or “licensing” models. So I think I make some parts public or even opensource.
Education
I feel that for me the next year is a perfect time to extend my knowledge, so I’ve selected a study program that fits my experience and would allow me to grow in other fields. I’ll tell more about it in 2026 if I have positive experience.
Career
Currently I am happy to work as a software engineer on contract basis. I know this field inside out, so unless I have an offer from a company where my work could make a significant impact - I choose b2b contracts because of less buerocracy and result based pay.
Business
Before, my business model was creating “apps for sale”. In 2018 I’ve had a succesful start with crypto apps, which provided funds for developing serious projects for business (ERP). I have had I good run building and seling custom plugins for ERP and e-com systems. Now staring from scratch, I see new opportunities, but my model will be different this time. If I have enough time I plan to build a new application engine reinforced with AI capabilities. Before you ask - it’s not GPT. Stay tuned.
Technology
The AI bubble is still inflating - it seems everything good can get on theese rails. Despite unhealthy market situation, I see a lot of use cases for current advancements in machine learning so now my stack is exteneded to ML frameworks, namely MLX. Because now I need C-ABI I’ve started using VLang instead of Golang. Also for my experiments I used BunJS instead of NodeJS. So I hope both technologines are ready for production in the coming year.
Wrap Up
We have a lot coming and only 52 weeks to get everything done. I wish you to reach all your goals in the coming year. With that, I am off to build my next year’s schedule.
Peace ✌️