Almost every year since 2020, I’ve made it a habit to sit down for a day and try to write something about the concluding year into a blog post. Sometimes I publish it on the last day of the year. Other times, like now, it lands around my birthday (January 6th).
If you’re curious, you can check out some of my previous year-in-review posts:
I don’t really do this to share. Most times, I don’t even post it on LinkedIn. I write these mainly so I have something documented. Something future-me can read. Something my children, friends, or anyone curious enough can stumble on years from now and see that life really moves step by step.
If this is your first time trying to catch up on my career journey, a little context: in 2020, during COVID, I took a major pause. I made a few hard calls and decided to realign my life and career. Since then, I've been very intentional about growth, especially in my career.
I actually wrote about that phase in my 2020 year-in-review. Funny how some decisions quietly shape everything that comes after.
2025… a year of building
From the first day of 2025, it was clear that I was going to build.
I didn’t know exactly how things would play out, but I knew a lot of time would be invested in building, which meant I would get to learn how SaaS works, develop products, understand systems, and, honestly, just get my hands dirty.
I’m glad I got to do this alongside some of my friends. Some days, you may be feeling low in energy, and the other person is high, creating PRs, while on other days, it's the other way around, and that's the good thing.
Some days, I was a sales guy (like today). On other days, I was writing backend code, tweaking frontend stuff, setting up pipelines, dealing with infrastructure, and touching way more DevOps than I ever planned to. And at some point, I even became a lawyer, trying to register a company in the US so we wouldn’t pay unnecessary fees. 😭
Looking back now, every single bit of that learning was worth it.
If there’s one thing 2025 installed in my brain, it’s that I can do anything. I just need to lock in, get my mind together, and it’s done.
This is one of the advantages AI has given us. You now have direct access to information that would’ve taken years of mentorship to get.
You still have to think, but the barrier to execution is way lower now…
Goals, DevOps, and reality checks
Now, all of this is not to say 2025 was a perfect year.
Some days ago, I went back to read my 2024 year-in-review post and I just laughed. I made all these bold promises about finishing a DevOps course, posting certificates, and doing all the serious goal-setting things.
Let me actually quote myself:
This year (2025), I plan to tackle this head-on. For every course I take, I’ll be sharing updates on LinkedIn. The goal is to track my progress, document what I’ve completed, and by the end of next year, proudly say, “Here’s what I achieved.”
Reflects in a few pains. 😭
I got about 50% into the course. That part is true, but I also learned a lot by building and by asking AI questions in real scenarios. And honestly, this is very real for where we are today.
I saw a video by Brad Traversy recently. I’m sure most developers have watched one or two of his videos at some point. He talked about why he doesn’t create long, detailed courses as much anymore. A lot of developers now just want answers. Let me talk to AI, build something, break it, fix it, and gain experience in the process.
That’s exactly how this year went for me.
My DevOps knowledge now is definitely not what it was in 2024. I’ve created several pipelines and automations. Real ones¡!
That said, I still don’t have a solid grasp of Kubernetes, which is bad, considering the goals I set. No excuses there. I think I will learn it or just get the adequate knowledge I need this year.
My YouTube channel + Blog
Last year, in my 2024 year-in-review, I wrote about my YouTube channel with a bit of pain. I had revived the channel late in 2023 with plans to publish at least one video every month in 2024. That should’ve been 12 videos, but I only managed to put out one towards the end of the year.
Even then, the channel still grew a bit, which made me wonder how much progress I could’ve made if I had taken it seriously. I blamed sound issues, background noise, frustration. I ended that section by saying, very boldly, that in 2025, I must push out at least one video every month. I even ordered a mic to remove any excuse to procrastinate.
Looking back now… I’m glad I wrote that publicly. In 2025, I published 17 videos. Not perfectly monthly, but consistently enough to matter.
What’s even more interesting is that I didn’t push the channel aggressively. Many times, I don’t share my videos anywhere, yet the channel gained 167 new subscribers, crossed 15,000+ views, and accumulated a good amount of watch time, mostly from people I don’t know at all (they even give me shoutouts sometimes on LinkedIn).
Another highlight was writing on my personal blog. I published four posts this year.
That might not sound like much, but considering how busy the year was, it’s something I’m genuinely proud of.
Church, letting go, and priorities
Two major things I’m really proud of this year:
- Learning how to let go when I needed to, even of people
- Becoming a worker in church
Here are some pictures to show I went to church:
If you talk to me regularly, you already know I don’t fail to mention church. Bro, when I leave my house, there’s like an 85% chance I’m going to church. 😭
Becoming a worker wasn’t easy, but I’m grateful for it. I’m also thankful for pastors who are genuinely tuned to what God wants and sensitive to timing and seasons.
Like I said last year, “The Word of God here is raw and undiluted, and being surrounded by young individuals who are so hungry for the things of God just makes you want more. It’s inspiring.”
You’re surrounded by young people who are intentional from prayer to Sunday school to arrangements. Excellence everywhere.
This year, I want to deepen my relationship with God. I want to know His Word more, pray more, and actually live it out.
Gym life — dead!
I failed woefully here. 💀 Last year, I boasted that “From September through December, I hit the gym regularly. On a bad week, I went twice; on a solid week, I managed three times; and in September, I was crushing it with five days a week.”
Coming from a solid four-month streak in late 2024, I didn’t step into a gym throughout 2025. Shocking… but also not shocking.
The gym close to my house didn’t help. How are you opening by 8am and closing by 6pm? No now. I should be able to go by 7am or 7pm. My days are too precious to be going to the gym at 9am.
That said, I did a lot of walking. Sometimes 40 minutes. Sometimes up to 1 hour and 30 minutes. I wasn’t consistent, but I did it often. I even ran intermittently during some of those walks. I know I can do better.
Speaking and community
In terms of speaking, I didn’t do much. I only spoke at OSCAFest ’25.
I didn’t really want to travel at some point, though, but I got some rejections, and even lost vibes at some point.
This year, I want to do more core workshops (less talking, more demos). I want to show and build things live. Also, international opportunities (from my mouth to God’s ears).
I failed woefully in terms of building the OSCA Ibadan chapter. Honestly… no words, no promises, but I will think…
Spidra and NGN Market
We started building Spidra around January 13th. We were very clueless and honestly didn’t know what we were getting into.
The idea was to build a no-code tool that makes it easy for people to scrape the web, implement automations, and get data into their pipelines, however they want.
The execution has obviously not been simple at all. If you know even a little about web scraping, you’ll understand. Now imagine trying to set up infrastructure that works for different sites, different use cases, and different scenarios.
We solved complex problems one brick at a time. At some point, we even got a paying customer (and it looks like I got a birthday gift of another paying customer lol). That alone did something to our brains.
Because of real users and real needs, we shipped features that would normally take months in just days. Crazy stuff.
This story is still unfolding, and 2026 is going to be a major ride for us. We’ll go seriously into marketing, automations, listings, and growth. There’s a lot ahead.
For NGN Market, I’m genuinely proud of what we are building. We’re making it easier to understand the Nigerian market (stocks, indices, bonds) with clean tables, charts, dashboards, and more coming. 2026 will be big for this.
We never knew how crazy what we were building was until it hit the internet and so many people engaged. This infact got us on the news with Businessday, Vilipress even the Business Day TV. and so many thousands visiting the site weekly and 100s of signup even with zero push.
2026 is going to be a great year. I can feel it. I actually know it.
Work, growth, and quiet wins
Work was solid this year. This is both for my freelance gigs, my full time role with Kinsta and by extension Sevalla, which I got to contribute a lot to, especially the website.
I couldn’t travel for a company meetup in Prague, and by extension, missed WordCamp events I could’ve attended. I won’t lie, I wasn’t sad, but... I took that to the secret place. Still, I know bigger opportunities are coming. It’s just a matter of time.
I’m really looking forward to learning a lot this year. During my annual review, someone wrote this about me:
Joel never ceases to amaze with his technical chops. I’m not sure if he already knows everything, or if he just manages to figure it out a little before the rest of us! Whichever, he is very generous with that knowledge and always ready to help when needed.
I’m grateful. I made numerous open-source contributions, learning subtle yet important things along the way.
This year, I want to learn more about marketing to developers, the intersection of sales and marketing, and content as a growth lever.
Family…. NYSC
Family will always be big for me.
I’m grateful to God for answered prayers, peace, ease, health, provision, and stability. There’s nothing like peace. Nothing!
NYSC ended in June. I was very happy. It wasn’t easy, but God is faithful. I’ll stop there.
Investments and money
If you know me well, I don’t gamble with funds. I have learned a lot about money over the years by reading books, listening to top guns, etc …
Last year, I said “This year 2025, I’m also planning to step out of my comfort zone and take more risks. 2024 felt like a “norm” year—steady but safe. I didn’t take many emotional or calculated risks, and honestly, that needs to change. Life itself is a risk, and sometimes, you just have to take the leap.”
I wanted to “play with money.” and I did. I didn’t lose money, obviously, but I tested the waters, I studied markets, made some moves, saw some profits (not crazy, but enough to confirm that more can be done).
This year, I’m playing bigger, diversifying and testing more fields, including physical businesses…
For 2026…
I want to start each day with a goal, learn daily, make each day count and in that way the year will count significantly.
10 years in 1 year …
till I come your way some other time… have a great year …
Random highlights
- I’m starting 2026 by switching from an M2 Air to an M4 Pro chip (there’s a lot of work ahead)
- I will finally create a “uses” page on my site (I’ll probably just prompt AI and supply images lmao)
- Workspace didn’t change much, except I got a quality mic for better videos
- Funny thing: I removed all my Logitech gear (keyboard and mouse are in a locker)
- I won an AirPods Pro at work
