I took a step back, planted my left foot and pressed hard off. I felt someone kick the back of my leg. A mini seismic shock crawled up the back of my calf. I thought a ball hit my leg but when I turned around, nothing.

For the first few minutes, I was in denial but I watched enough sports to know what happened. It was serious. I just tore my achilles playing pickleball.

The next day was a frenetic blur of emotions, decisions and planning. Surgery. Flights. Cancelled trips. I swapped snowboarding in Aspen for sitting on my ass at home, in a splint, watching endless Netflix shows.

An achilles tear is one of the worst injuries in sports. It’s an injury that ends athletic careers. Kobe Bryant wasn’t the same. Klay Thompson wasn’t the same. Basketball players rarely come back the same. It’s known as the “kiss of death” for many athletes.

Sports are a huge part of my identity. But I couldn’t think about how devastating the injury was. For the next 9 months, I had weekly sessions with my PT. The most important thing in recovery wasn’t PT, it was keeping my mind right. The only way to keep my mind right was to celebrate small wins. I celebrated the first day I left my house. I celebrated when I could do upper body workouts. Being able to walk in a boot felt incredible. We had to celebrate every little milestone.

Fast forward, 9 months post surgery, I climbed the height of Mt. Everest on my stair climber in a single session (lol). I climbed from 6am to 8pm, 14 total hours, 5261 calories burned and 29k feet of elevation. Hard to imagine six months ago, I was relearning how to walk.

Highlight Reel

2025 started in Xi’an, China. Becca and I devoured delicious spicy noodles, visited her parents and then headed to Niseko, Japan for a week for powder-filled snowboarding. We stopped over in Singapore, got incredibly sick afterwards and then hosted a ski house in Salt Lake City for a month. It was culmination of everything I loved, community, sports and great friends.

After SLC, Becca and I planned to go to Aspen, but then I tore my achilles which threw a wrench in all our plans. We quickly flew back to NYC, scheduled surgery and then I was incapacitated for the next few months.

I got bored during this period so I tried building an AI ad generation startup in my free time. We got our first customer but I realized we couldn’t deliver on quality. We delivered ads that were horrible and we just didn’t have the design sense.

Once I relearned how to walk, we went to Finland on a “sauna tour” since it’d be low impact on my achilles. After this trip, I realized there were a lot of things I needed to improve on as a partner.

As summer wound down, I gradually recovered my ability to walk, run and do more activities. I tried to get into cycling but got bored within a few months of biking in NYC. It was the same bike paths over and over again. A team member left my team so work really picked up. I hosted a birthday party and went on a bunch of work trips. We hosted a friendsgiving, visited my mom in Vegas and prepped ourselves for winter ski season and moving out of NYC.

Lessons Learned

Practicing Healthy Self-Expression/Selfishness

Despite all the personal development I’ve done this year, the biggest epiphany I had this year was that my natural state is to be a people pleaser. I still care too much about people liking me. I still care about being accepted in a group. I’m afraid of conflict. I’m afraid of tough conversations. I don’t like making others feel bad.

I learned that I need to have more of an opinion on what I want, not just do things to supplicate others. I learned that if I’m mad, I should get mad and express it. It’s better than holding it in because it's just way worse expressing it later. I learned that if someone crosses my boundaries or has unacceptable behavior, I can’t be afraid of getting into a fight.

Doing all this causes an intense feeling of negative emotions. I need to be OK with feeling these negative emotions. All of this is magnified in a serious, long term relationship.

How do I stay aware and change? Meditation and “Me” time. I’ve gotten away from meditation and I need to get back to it to ground myself and be aware of my own thoughts.

I also need space to be purely selfish. Men like me easily prioritize well being of others over themselves. “Me” time is time I can dedicate purely to doing whatever I want and be alone with my own thoughts. It keeps me grounded and centered. I notice that when I don’t have enough “me” time, I feel drained, less present, irritable and annoyed at whomever I’m with. When I have enough, I feel recharged and can show up with much more energy.

Once I’m aware of what I’m feeling and want, how do I express that? That’ll come from practicing expressing my emotions and feelings. So I’m signing up for Improv.

Exploration vs. Commitment

Exploration mode vs. Commitment mode are two different modes of thinking. Exploration mode is focused on breadth. There was a period where I was building two side business’, training BJJ, training for a half-marathon all at the same time. I dabbled in many things like learning spanish, learning copywriting, poker. I did those activities but didn’t make any commitments for any of them.

Commitment mode is when you pick something and commit to seeing it through. You don’t dabble in multiple things. You pick one thing, knowing it’s at the expense of everything else. The mindset is “this is going to happen, no matter what.” I made a big commitment in becoming a data scientist. I made a commitment to complete month to master. For both of these, I was going to succeed, no matter what.

I needed exploration mode to know what I could commit to. Commitment without exploration results in me picking something I don’t like and wasting years of my life. Exploration without commitment results in just doing a lot of things but never really becoming great at anything.

I’ve gotten good at the exploration mindset. But at this point in my life, this mindset is hindering me from reaching the next level with my skills, relationship and life. Commitment to a single thing for a long period of time, was something I hadn’t really done. Month to Master was the first time I really committed to finishing something and I did it. It’s time to bring the same energy back.

While I’m not sure exactly what I want to “master” yet, it’s time to stop dabbling and having 5 different projects at the same time. I’m committing to ensuring my relationship is successful and great. I’m committing to becoming great at my job. I’m committing to one sport/fitness goal at a time.

Losing Discipline

The biggest reason to not drink isn’t because it’s unhealthy, it’s because it destroys discipline. After a heavy night of drinking, it takes me at least three days to finally feel “normal.” When I drink every week, I’m playing catch up for at least 50% of the time, which leaves no room for building discipline. In NYC, it’s easy to fall into this spiral.

I’ve always tried figuring out the right balance. I’ve done no drinking for the year. I’ve also had no restraints. For 2025, I’ll start dry and then go to 1 drink max, with raging saved for weddings and bachelor parties.

2026 Goals

For the last year, I’ve had too many soft commitments. I’d have a burst of motivation but then because they were soft, I wouldn’t be able to get through the trough of difficulty. The biggest theme for 2026 will be actually committing, following through with things and avoiding shiny object syndrome.

Objectives here are intentionally kept vague, as these are the northstars to move toward. The goals to hit these objectives will be below the objective.

Objectives

Become a Commited, Assertive Leader
Build my Creative, Feminine Identity
Become a High Level Athlete

Objective 1: Become a Committed, Assertive Leader

The leadership traits I want to work on are: discipline, commitment, assertiveness. To achieve this vision, the first pillar I need to work on is being disciplined. Meditation and quitting alcohol is a fundamental pillar for discipline. When I’m drinking a lot, I’m trapped in a cycle of hangovers and recovery. I don’t have space to be disciplined. Regular meditation makes me aware of my thoughts and enables me to stay focused. Without it, it’s easy to be scatter-brained and have shiny object syndrome.

Meditate for 60 days in a row
No Alcohol. Exceptions are weddings, bachelor parties, one in a lifetime experiences.

As a leader, I don’t have a problem being in service of others, teaching or helping others grow. My weakness is I probably think about others' happiness too much. Too much to the point where it’s difficult for me to say No. My default is a “nice guy, people pleaser”, so “me” time is super important to being in touch with my own wants and desires. Whether it’s workout, write, veg out, it’s space I need to do whatever I want. Whenever I don’t have it, I feel ungrounded, irritable and not present.

2 hours of “Me” time per day. This could be working out, writing, vegging out, going for a run etc.

My immediate three goals will be:

Meditate for 60 days in a row
Minimal Alcohol.
2 hours of “Me” time per day.

Objective 2: Rebuild my Creative, Feminine Identity

Through the last 10 years of my life, I’ve been hyper-focused on building my career. My focus’ have all been left brained/logic/very “masculine” activities: biking from SF to LA, building tech startups, athletics, doing hard challenges. My identity has become this athletic, hyper-optimized machine. It’s served me well and I don’t want to lose it.

At the same time, I’ve underinvested in my right brain, creative side. Hyper-optimized tech bros tend to both suppress and be out of touch with their emotions. We think too much using optimization, structure and logic, but lack creative taste. Think the stereotypical tech bro, with a mattress on their floor, bench press in their room with company swag as their fashion choice.

I want to reinvest in my own self-expression and creativity. It’ll add more “spark” to my relationship, I don’t need to completely change my personality, but adding a touch of this will take me to the next level:

Complete a 4 week improv class (Expressiveness)
Video Journal 3 to 5 times per week (Expressiveness)
30 Days of Shuffling. This is more of a “fun” goal, but challenging myself to do this everyday for 30 days, will be an exercise in discipline.

Objective 3: Become a High-Level Athlete

Moving to San Francisco will be great for my athletic pursuits. Every year, I have one big fitness goal/challenge. This year is still up in the air, slotted for H2, but it may involve climbing the hardest cycling route in the world. While I’m in the transition phase, the focus will be on maintenance mode and health.

Reduce body fat % by 2% absolute.
Complete one big athletic goal.

Since I’ll be in California, surfing and snowboarding will be a bigger part of my life moving forward.

Logistics (stuff that needs to happen)

Move from NYC to San Francisco

Fun

Snowboarding/Ski Trips
Coachella
Asia Weddings (May, Nov)

Misogi (one, life defining challenge per year)

TBD, but likely bike the hardest climb in the world which is Mauna Kea in Hawaii.

What ChatGPT says this archetype looks like for my goals

Now that I’ve written these goals, I need to slot them in through the year. I’ll leave H2 up in the air since things could change. But for Q1, the main thing for me to get going is rebuilding my creative identity and building key habits for discipline. I color coded these goals based on how much additional effort it’ll require:

Cheers to a great 2026!