That was 2025

December 31, 2025

What a year. The most exhausting one I have ever experienced. The main reason for that is that I gave birth to my second child in spring and since then my nights (and days) were not really relaxing. Two or more hours of uninterrupted sleep have been a rarity ever since…

Motherhood

Being a mum is a job that’s hard to describe if you have not experienced it yourself. It’s a rollercoaster of emotions and changes all the other parts in life.

The other parts being…

• Music: Well, sadly, there’s not really time for making music at the moment except for singing children’s songs 🥲. The plan is to start taking cello lessons again sometime in 2026.
• Friends: New ones come, old ones go. This is hard to accept, but when lifestyles and life paths drift apart, it’s better to let it go (at least for the moment) and focus on new connections.
• Family: Now that I have “my own” little family, relationships with other family members and priorities changed. The most important thing to me now is that the four of us have a good time. Other things (like, for example, family Christmas meetups with aunts/uncles/great-grandmothers) must wait if I’m not in the mood for them.
• Sport: There was not much time for sport except for a postpartum recovery course and some follow-up yoga sessions. I definitely need to free up time for this in 2026, because after two pregnancies and carrying around two heavy children all the time, my body is aching from head to toe. At least I was able to end the year by participating in a New Year’s Eve run 💪.
• Work: Usually, mothers stop working for some time when they have a baby at home. I did so too, but only for a couple of weeks. First of all, because I like my job and as a self-employed web developer, I didn’t really want to just stop working for a year or so. After such a long break, I would probably have to find new projects and clients. And learn a lot of stuff. Either because I forgot (it took me more than a week to get up to speed again and remember all my IntelliJ keyboard shortcuts 🙈) or because the web platform is evolving so rapidly…

Plans for next year

At the moment, my days feel like chaos. I’m not much of a New Year’s resolutions person, but I really want to try and take more time for myself again. This means I need to structure days and weeks, set priorities and stick to my plans (I’m not good at that either).

We already tried to come up with a calendar for “office hours”, because let me tell you, it’s really hard to structure the day if you are used to keeping everything flexible (because that’s one of the advantages of being self-employed). But now, as parents (both self-employed), we figured that we need at least some kind of plan. 🙈 I will keep you updated how it all turns out…

Furthermore, I’d like to be happier with imperfection. This project starts with the website you’re currently looking at. I’m in a bit of a hurry right now because I want to release this post today, and there are only ten minutes left before I have to go back to my children. I could read everything again and look for spelling and grammar mistakes, I could also refactor the code I’ve written to set up this little blog, because it’s a bit… inelegant.

But I need something to do for 2026 as well, so, let’s publish these thoughts and enjoy the evening with the family instead. 😊

Have a wonderful New Year’s Eve everyone! 🥂✨