As it gets closer to the end of 2025, I’m excited to start looking ahead to next year! This has been another busy year for our family and a lot of personal goals and achievements:

• I was able to achieve my yearly goal of biking 365 hours this year! I could have easily gone way past it but ended up separating my shoulder at the end of August and was generally burnt out from cycling heading into December.

• I took on a really awesome and challenging new role at work which I have written about, which continually allows me to leverage my strengths while also making a significant impact on the company’s future direction.

• Spent a lot of great time with the family including some trips to San Diego (last US family trip for a while), back to the Comox Valley and Vancouver Island and a lot of exploring around Metro Vancouver. We have also been spending a lot of time at home now that we have been in our house for a few years.

As I look forward to 2026, I’m really excited about the new year for a bunch of really awesome reasons:

• I recently went through a number of medical tests which all came back positive which I’m really grateful for!

• I’m changing my cycling goals to focus on completing 4 large cycling events throughout the year. I have already registered for 3 and I’m looking forward to more focused training/riding this year, while also including more recovery time in my routine.

• I’m focusing on “going with the flow” more in my life and developing balance, while also leveraging the structure that I have used to maintain my busy lifestyle.

Here’s to an exciting 2026 for everyone and wishing y’all a Happy New Year!

It’s hard to believe that we’re over the half-way point of 2025! As I reflect back on my goals and focus areas that I defined earlier in the year, it’s incredible to see the progress that I have made and the pivots that some aspects of my life have changed. It’s been a hell of a year so far, but I’m also really excited to share that I have been doubling-down on my key focus areas for the year and not trying to change them too much.

Family

My boys are 9 and 7 years old, respectively! It’s been a wonderful year to see them grow and complete another school year. We’re really lucky that we have been able to have some good family trips so far this year (San Diego over Spring Break, Victoria over Easter and Vancouver Island to start the summer break). We front-loaded a ton of our trips, so the remainder of the year we will be spent locally in Vancouver which is something we are looking forward to. I have been working really hard to try to spend more time with the kids off devices, whether that be playing video games, reading or getting outside with them. Engaging with growing children doesn’t come without it’s own challenges, so I’m looking forward to continuing my growth in this area.

Cycling

I’m well on my way of exceeding my goal of 365 hours of cycling this year! At time of writing, I’m about ~20h ahead of my goal which is expected during the summer months. I’m hoping to bank a number of hours this summer so that I’m not playing catch-up on Zwift during the winter. I am also proud that I completed my first ever gravel event (Goodride Gravel) and my first GranFondo (Valley GranFondo)! These events challenged me physically and mentally which I really enjoyed. Unfortunately, due to poor planning I won't have any other events this year as I won’t be attending the Whistler GranFondo. I will be planning ahead more next year for this. In the meantime, I’m excited to continue to do lots of rides to meet my time goal this year - solo rides, family rides and club rides!

Work

Finally, the most dynamic part of my life so far this year has been my work and role. Back in November of last year I took on a new opportunity that moved me back into people management and in an engineering leadership role again. While I was super excited for this role and spent an amazing ~6 months with the team, I’m proud to share that I have joined Salesforce’s newly formed Office of the Chief Architect (OCA)! This is a new function within the Technology organization and I’m responsible for bootstrapping the organization, operations, programs - basically a little bit of everything to get this new team going. I’m really excited for this opportunity and it’s breathing some fresh life back into my career at Salesforce and setting me up for success in the future.

That’s it! It’s been great to spend a bit of time writing on my blog, but now I need to get back to working towards my goals this year!

My first post of 2025! You’ll probably notice that I didn’t post a “Top Albums” list last year, which is rare for me. I just haven’t been listening to enough new music to justify a blog post. To be fair, I have added new albums to my library in the past year but not as much to make a list. I guess I’m getting old!

Over the month of January I have been working on refining my goals for 2025. I have gone back and forth as to how detailed or deep I want to go with them, but have ultimately settled on three basic areas that I plan to spend my attention on for the most of the year:

• Family - Making sure that I’m prioritizing quality time with my family this year. I have dropped a lot of external commitments to make time for them in the evenings and on weekends. I’m also getting better at limiting time on devices after school and in the evenings to focus my attention on my kids.

• Cycling - I have mapped out my race/event plan for the year which includes some aggressive goals, including 2x Gran Fondo events in Vancouver this year. I plan on doing a lot of interval training on my trainer during the “off season” (if you can call that in Vancouver) and generally improving my performance on the bike.

• Work - I recently took on a new role at work and have moved back into people management, working on the cutting-edge of generative AI and autonomous agents (amongst other cool projects!). I’m really psyched to be joining a great team and working on some new, interesting technologies, while also needing to priorities my family and hobbies above work.

These goals and focus areas will be driving a lot of my decision making throughout the year. I find that I’m going to be deprioritizing taking on new asks/initiatives in my personal life where I can, while also trying to continue to build a network and community. I’m looking forward to spring when cycling season opens and I can join some group rides more frequently!

Enjoying the Coquitlam Crunch with the kids

“Winter” gravel rides in Coquitlam

View from the Salesforce Tower in New York