2025 Ups

Another year behind us - time flies. Steps - wise I more or less matched the 2024 numbers, which I called "definitely below expectations". Now the expectations were trimmed and I am quite happy with the outcome. Yes, lowering expectations is the easiest path to happiness! The knee and ankle injuries took longer to heal than I expected and affected my walking distances at the beginning of the year. 2025 was also very travel - intensive (if not the most!). And especially considering the long distance nature of my business trips, I am quite happy with the amount of physical exercise I was able to put. This physical exercise is BTW the best way to fight jetlag and quickly accommodate to new time zones.

So no real downs in 2025 and my total is now about a half of the Earth's circumference: 19667 kilometers (with the watch on).

Some TZ changes were quite brutal. In late August I flew from Poland to California (9 hours shift) for the 3-day IES Annual Conference and then overnight to China (another 9 hours shift) for a series of customers' meetings. The flight arrived in Hong Kong around 5AM local and at 9AM I was already in the meeting room. Luckily the HKG airport has free showers right at the arrivals gate. And morning runs in Shenzhen are a real pleasure.

All in all I was 5 times to China in 2025 - a huge change, made possible thanks to the relaxed visa-free rules for EU (Schengen-based) nationals. Suddenly going to China requires no planning, just buy a ticket in the morning and fly in the afternoon. And the Chinese market / partner ecosystem development has been absolutely outstanding for us in 2025. The mutual trust created during in-person meetings cannot be achieved through any remote Zoom call.  

Perhaps the only "down" of the year was the fact that I did not go on any family holiday (not counting the 4-day snowboarding getaway to Austrian Alps in April). July was a no-fly month when I really enjoyed my cabin-in-the-woods life, spending every night in a lie-flat bed (for free!). This was to some extent compensated by a week-long crossing of the Southern Pacific (via Tahiti and Fiji) and will be soon additionally offset by the mid-January getaway to New Zealand (more on that in future posts).

Business-wise it was also the best year we had, from reaching a financial break-even to the record manufacturing and (especially!) commissioning numbers almost every month. So can't really complain. Fingers crossed the trend will continue :)

A short retrospective on what I wrote a year ago:

Speaking of the road, 2024 has been my best year ever. On the personal front certainly the New Zealand hiking trip was an absolute blast. Maybe next Winter I'll be able to come back there. We've also crossed a very important point in the development of the company, that clearly feels like an opening of a new chapter. The official numbers are not ready yet, but the gut feeling is the stars are aligned.

Yes it was a good year. Just ups :) It is a high bar for the 2026 :) :) :)