Table of contents

• 🖼️ Theme of the year and overview of the goals for 2025
• 👨‍👦 Father and son
• 🏋️‍♂️ CrossFit journey
• 🇧🇬 One month in Bulgaria
• ❤️ Love, friendships, community
• 🌳 Return to (the Bulgarian) roots
• 💕 I love em both
• ✨ AI and the spark of engineering
• ✍️ Content, creativity, inspiration
• ⬜ Goals for 2026

Journey > Destination. Social animal

It’s been almost a bit scary writing in these yearly posts how much the current year has been better than the previous one for the past few years. And especially so when the previous year had been so, so good itself. So, I’m “happy” to say in its own weird way that won’t be the case this year. Not because this year was not great. It was an absolutely amazing year, I’m very happy with it, there were quite a lot of great moments and a bunch of really cool experiences, progress in various ways… Yet this year also brought a lot of challenges, perhaps a bit more so than the past two. Some stress and other less positive vibes were a part of the picture too, perhaps a level slightly above average. Of course, all of this is through my very own, very personal, very subjective prism (attempting to be objective on the look out of the whole past year from the position of the last month of the year is a bit tricky 😅). Let’s remember not to take all of this way too seriously; in the end, it’s all about having fun, having some thoughts laid out, some light, and hopefully a somewhat entertaining reflection. I should say, much like in all previous cases, I’m of course very grateful to be here, enjoying yet another lap around the sun, all the adventures had and thankful even for the tough times, cause we all know they truly mold us to be who we need to become.

Here’s a picture gallery to kick things off and set the mood:

At the beginning of the year, I had a mini “re-return” to the FPV drone content. I had a company reach out to me for a review on a product, which reminded me of the olden days. I did this for what, 3 years, between 2017 and 2020. I agreed. This was gonna be the last “Hail Mary” and the last test if I was ever gonna go back to making FPV drone-related content. I’m happy I did it. But yeah, it wasn’t the same. I think at this point we leave FPVTips in the past, and all the drone reviews. I’ll always be grateful for those. I learnt a lot during that time, but it just doesn’t work anymore. I wanna make content again, just not about FPV drones.

There were new acquaintances throughout the year, and some stuck around too, and I’m happy about that. Being social on all accounts (because that’s really me and who I am) has been a thing for a while. In Finland, that’s a bit trickier than most other places, but not impossible. There are people who are such a joy to be around, banter with, and just charge you with energy, and I try to do the same.

I had to take some antibiotics for strep throat for the first time in 10+ years, so that was something, but it was a very easy illness, nothing to complain tbh. Training had been good throughout, except for the 2-week episode of back pain in October/November, which was not fun. It was self-induced out of my own stupidity and moving too fast, something I’ll keep working on. Form > Weight any day of the week. I’ve been teaching Anton more Bulgarian as he showed interest, and he blew my mind how quickly he started reading with the Bulgarian alphabet. He’s an amazing kid; he has surprised me in many ways this year, and it’s crazy to see him growing up to be such a big boy nowadays. I’ve cooked a number of Bulgarian recipes this year and really mastered a few. Especially the Banitza and the Mousakka. And we had an AMAZING and pretty long stay in Bulgaria in the summer.

These posts started close to 10 years ago now with these simple goal-setting lists. I’m not sure this is entirely applicable nowadays. Especially with my mental shift of “Journey > Destination”. But, like, fr fr. Six. Seven. (let’s mimic the slang of Gen Alpha a bit :D). Seriously, though, let’s look at the list:

⬜ Goals for 2025:

• 📝 Continue slowly writing my book - Born in Space
• 🏊‍♂️ Continue training for Ironman someday
• 🏃‍♂️ Run half marathon
• 🏅 CrossFit Open: All 3 events (with better DUs)
• 🦺 CrossFit Murph: vest again and slightly better time
• 💪 Participate in a CrossFit competition if opportunity presents itself
• 🗣️ Connect with people: dedicate time to friends old and new
• 🛳️ Awesome vacation with Anton (Bulgaria, Greece, else)
• 🏋️‍♀️ Training camp or training vacation?
• 🧘 Do a bit of yoga
• 🧎 Try meditation
• 🏀 Continue Basketball, table tennis, CrossFit, Swimming with Anton
• 🎥 Creative skill teaching with Anton: video editing, game making, AI
• 🥯 Continue some of our baking attempts with Anton
• 😄 Smile and have fun

I didn’t do much for my book this year; yet, I’ll keep that item on the list for next year too. I’m getting closer and closer to getting back to it, I think. I’ve mentioned many times that I like the setting and the plot of it, I still believe in it, years after I came up with the original premise for it, and that is a very good sign. I did play around with generating some AI images based on texts from my book to help with visualizing the main ideas of it. In fact, perhaps I should drop a couple below just to give you an idea. Those are super crude. I didn’t really bother re-generating them until they felt perfect. Those are literally the first prompts, just based on content from the book chapters, but I like them as they are decent enough for a storyboard and to visualize the novel roughly.

I’ve not done Ironman training this year, and I might still do it someday, but it won’t be for now, as a part of a list. If I decide to go for it, I will. I still like swimming, I’m still gonna work a bit on running, biking being the bigger bottleneck, but who knows, I might get into it. For now, it’s not a big priority for me 😉 Same for the half-marathon thing. It’s really 100% a thing of ”why not be a person who’s finished one, as opposed to a person who’s not”. But sometimes, that’s not enough of a reason to go for it. And again, who knows; stranger things have happened before, I might still go for it if the moment is right and I feel it. These posts and lists are not intended to completely plan out my life. In fact, I’d like to leave quite a lot of room for random stuff 😀.

CrossFit Open and Murph both went well, but more on that in the CrossFit section below. I’ve still not participated in a CrossFit comp, but I think I really want to give it a crack. I’m sure I’ll jump into something when the time is right, and it feels good to do so… And now I’m signed up for a competition in February 2026! Let’s see how that goes, exciting!

The social aspects of life are something I’ll always keep in mind. I’ve always enjoyed it in its many forms. Years ago, I let myself forget about it (prioritizing the wrong things) for a while and put it on the back burner for a few years, something I regret. Never again. Community, friends, family. These social relationships are so much more important than many of us may even realise. It’s been nice to catch up and spend time with old friends. It’s been lovely to make a lot of new acquaintances and friends, too. I don’t say it lightly when I say that I do appreciate everyone I connect with. Truly. I think we’ll expand on this topic in various subtopics below.

We had an amazing vacation in Bulgaria with Anton. It was twice as long as last year, because in his words, “last year we were there for 2 weeks, this year we should go for 4 weeks”. Also, following his logic, it seems we should be there for 6 weeks next year. Hey, I’d love that, I don’t oppose it in any way. Eventually, we are gonna be hardcapped by the length of his summer vacation, which is only 2 months 😅. But jokes aside, we’ll take whatever time we can get. The important part is to make the time count. I’ll expand on the trip in a lot of detail below, but it was a great time!

No training camps and training vacations this year, but something might be coming up next year. No regrets on not having any such camps this year; the choice was simple when it came down to how to spend vacation days this year in the summer - use up all 4 weeks just for Bulgaria with Anton. That was the choice, and it was a good one. As opposed to the 4 trips in 2024. Who knows how things will work out next year?

Yoga, meditation, nope. The problem with life and time is that you just can’t have time for all the things. Now, sometimes, it’s mind-boggling to me that in the entire year, I didn’t find time to go to 1 yoga class. Or I didn’t sit once outside on the terrace in the sun and try to meditate. It’s crazy, it seems so easy to do, yet it just doesn’t happen. I still think those are helpful and important practices, maybe I’ll get there someday, and at any rate, they are not the biggest priority, just fun little things to try out. I have no shortage of ideas on what to try, however, and sometimes those compete for resources with each other.

Anton continued his CrossFit classes, and it’s something he enjoys, which warms my heart. We’ve also gone to the basketball courts plenty in the summer and when the weather has been nice. We also went to play table tennis a few times. We’ve only not found time for the swimming part, but we’ll see how things go next year.

Learning about AI, making a game in Unity, and video editing are things we’ve worked on. Every once in a while, nothing crazy, but it’s nice to see how quickly he picks up new skills and how much he can do alone. He’s editing his own videos in CapCut on his computer, and I post them for him on his YouTube channel. Fun times 😅.

We had a brief baking attempt to make some buns last year. I remember that, and since then, mainly thanks to my friend and the recipe she shared with me for Bulgarian banitza, we’ve made banitza at home so many times! I’m absolutely hooked, because I love that pastry with feta cheese. It’s sooo goood. And I think I’m pretty good at making it now!

Lastly, on the list of goals for 2025 is “smile and have fun”. Yes, yes, yes! I like being serious and focused on things, but I definitely like laughing and having fun. There are a couple of places / people who really make this so natural. During the easy and the hard times. In the end, while we are living on this space rock, hurling around the sun in our solar system, being the tiny, little specks of sand in the grand scheme of the universe, we might as well smile and have fun! It’s a lot more important than we may think. And don’t get too lost in the details of planning out and dreaming of the future; Be present, enjoy the ride and remember that Journey > Destination.

2️⃣0️⃣2️⃣5️⃣

👨‍👦 Father and son

Every year is a special adventure with this kid, and this year was no exception. We did a lot of different things. And our bread and butter was good food, some workouts, lots of gaming and socializing with friends, travels, basketball, a few movies, a lot of books, and more Bulgarian dishes like banitza and mousakka.

It’s been amazing to see Anton’s interest in Bulgarian peak before, during, and after the trip to Bulgaria. He’s, in fact, pretty good at it. He doesn’t know a lot of words, but he’s learnt to read the alphabet and comfortably and quickly reads whole words. I was very impressed by how quickly he’d picked it up. This year has been a bit about coming back to my Bulgarian roots in various ways, this being one of them.

After reading the Winnie the Pooh books quite a few times, this year we finally started something else, and interesting too - the Harry Potter series. Years ago, we read the first book together with Anton, but the 2nd book didn’t fly; he was too young, perhaps, and lost interest. This time around, he had a very genuine interest in the Harry Potter stories, and it’s been great so far. Currently, at the end of December, we are finishing book 4 very, very soon. If you think about it, we started with book 1 at some point in May, so not too shabby.

Watching the Minecraft movie together was a lot of fun. Especially so because we’ve played the game together so much, so we had a lot of common context. We spent time on the basketball court and went on walks on sunny days. Anton really enjoyed the “Bring Your Kid to Work Day at Elisa”. Especially because we missed the one in 2024, but he did join the one in 2023. He was super excited about this year’s edition, and we had a lot of fun again, checking out the world of the grownups, work, AI, our company dragon plushie, among other things 😅.

The Bulgarian trip worked out much better than expected, to be honest. I’ll expand on that a lot more below, but we had the chance to a little bit “wing it”, without any pre-planned and pre-booked hotels or destinations. Ok, maybe 1 pre-organized thing - the get together with my friends in Velingrad. But for the most part, we were able to just travel to different places and kind of did things the way we wanted to and felt like. That was very, very nice. We visited Velingrad, Sozopol, staying in Plodviv a bunch, went again to the seaside, but this time to Kiten.

And after our well-deserved Bulgarian vacation, it was time to get back home and enjoy regular life too! We were excited to be back, to touch a computer keyboard for the first time again in a month, to see if our plants had made it while we were away. Anton soon started school, and now, in the 3rd grade, it was time for him to get used to walking there and back by himself. He absolutely loved it and aced that! I was quite surprised to be honest, how QUICKLY everything changed. Literally in the span of a week or two, it went from always having him dropped off and picked up to… well, him walking there and back on his own. And he enjoyed it too, which was the best part. We live like a 7-10 minute walk from the school, so it does make for a very pleasant walk.

Another thing that started happening multiple times a week on a weekly basis was Anton hosting his friends over. I’m so happy for him. He also goes to visit his friends sometimes on other days. They have a very good group of friends, and this, I’m so happy for him. Not only do they socialize and play games together while talking on WhatsApp or Discord, as previously, but now also hang out together. It’s very nice to see.

In terms of sports hobbies, he’s still had the ball games hobby this year, as well as CrossFit. He likes it a lot and seems to have a lot of fun, and there’s a lot to learn, plenty of different movements and exercises to do. One of my favorites was one open gym we did together with Anton, where he wrote the programming for us <3.

He’s really comfortable with editing videos in CapCut and has been for a while now. I support him with tips, and I’m uploading his videos for him to his YouTube channel. It’s nice to see him working on those creative things. There’s also this other game called “Geometry Dash” and he’s been making levels for it, too. I love that! Reminds me of making maps for games I played back in the day, writing fan fiction, and so on. At the same time, it’s a real-life skill to learn video editing, which makes it extra cool. We’ve also been talking about AI a bit. It’s interesting and very tricky to talk about it tbh. Explaining the power of it and the change it brings, while at the same time fighting to keep the parts of the creative process still human and full of soul and expression.

Another mini story is about his birthday gift to me.

He had put these elaborate set of clues I had to follow around the whole house, like 6-7 of them. And the crazy part is he had been home after school, perhaps not more than 30-40 mins before me :D What a kid! The things he comes up with sometimes blow my mind lol.

🏋️‍♂️ CrossFit journey

Let’s see, before I even check my notes, from the top of my head, what’s been the biggest news in my CrossFit journey this year? The first thing that comes to mind is the first body weight snatch I did in February <3. This is absolutely huge for me and has been one of my biggest goals for the past 2 years. I was beyond stoked to do that 78kg snatch (BW: 76kg at the time). And then an 80kg power snatch 2 months later in April. So, so happy about this! I did do the CrossFit Open and I think I was semi-pleased with my results, however, it’s worth noting I had a strep throat and was on antibiotics for a week, which affected my performance for sure, but I’m still happy I was feeling well enough to show up and do it, and of course, Anton was my number one supporter <3.

Honorable mention to my old grips <3

I’ve had those for 1.5 years, give or take, and they have unlocked BMUs for me. I’ll always be grateful for them. Easily my most favorite piece of equipment. And to think of it, I got them from Australia from a random TikTok advert, but they were really good and worked like a charm. Completely eliminating the grip and regrip struggle and just letting me focus on the movement itself. But in the end, the metal bracket snapped (while I was at the top part of a muscle-up 😅), and it was all over. I’ve used the Velites quad pro all-terrain grips, whatever they are called, grips, and they are good and super sturdy, but they don’t have the cushion for the wrist part, so you get a lot of wrist skin damage with those in longer sets and workouts. Finally, in August, I found something similar to my previous grips - the Frog grips. Well endorsed by games athletes, once again from Australia, so cost about 100 euros to get them to Finland with shipping and customs fees. Pricey, but can you put a price on happiness? However! I’d normally recommend and endorse them as well, but in this case, I will not! I don’t think the quality is up to par. While the grips are sticky, comfy on the wrists, light, and nice, I can’t believe how much they have worn out in just the past 4 months. It’s kind of crazy. In comparison, my previous grips didn’t get anywhere near such wear and tear in the first year, lol. Judge for yourselves.

Frog grips brand new out of the package:

Frog grips after 4 months of use:

A bit grim 😅. No bueno. I’ll be looking for some new grips soon, once again.

I’m happy I did Murph again this year. 3 minutes faster than last year, and I tried to “carb load” before it, which kind of worked out well.

I would say there are a lot of untested things this year, all in all, which is fine, perhaps some nice improvements are coming around the corner in 2026 😉. I’m very happy with my snatch 1RM of 80kg (in fact, just now at the end of the year, a few days before publishing this post, I did 80kg squat snatch again and failed 85kg 3 times), which is awesome. But what I like even more about it is how frequently and on a “good day”, I can pull up at the gym and get the snatch weight up to 70-75kg. I like that consistency. Basically, close to BW snatch on most days, which is really nice (my current bodyweight at the end of December is 78kg). A similar thing I enjoy when it comes to bar muscle-ups. I can comfortably do 40-50-60 in a workout, and I like that for volume. My current record for BMU volume is 70 in one workout in 14 rounds of modified “Mindy” (5 BMU, 5 push-ups, 10 air squats), and I did that in 20-something minutes, which was fine.

Some stats as of December 2025:

Movement	Score	Movement	Score
Snatch	80kg (+4kg 🆕)	BMU unbroken	20 (unchanged)
BMU in a single workout	70 (🆕)	RMU	5 (unchanged)
Clean & Jerk	95kg (unchanged)	Clean	108kg
Shoulder press	70kg (unchanged)	Murph	46:40 (🆕 -3min)
Back squat	142kg (unchanged)	CrossFit Open	~ 65th percentile
Front squat	130kg (🆕 +5kg)	Jackie	6:37 (unchanged)
Deadlift	155kg	DT	11:53 @ 60kg

I think it starts to be obvious that, of course, now that I’m wrapping up the 4th year of training, things are really starting to plato (Journey > Destination), which only makes sense; it was bound to happen eventually. That being said, we’re far from being in the best possible shape, or the best results, etc. It’s just that the jumps in weights, for example, are starting to be a bit smaller, and that’s all good.

But really, in the end, do you know what really matters? The awesome vibes at our North Engine CrossFit gym. The people, the energy, the atmosphere, it’s all a vibe. Everyone shows up for their own reasons, but everyone is there to have fun and get better at something, or even just keep moving. I’d like to be able to keep showing up and having fun and playing like a kid with some of the fun movements :D Progress is important, especially to my brain, but fun, smiles, and happiness are even more important, and who says you can’t have both?

Helsinki Midnight Run

I did the Helsinki Midnight Run for the 2nd time. This year, the weather was even better than last year. No pouring rain, still no wind, pretty nice. The major challenge came from the fact that I didn’t prepare for that run AT ALL. At least in 2024, I had done a few 7-8k runs and 1 10k run. This time - nada. I suppose I thought I’d roll up and just wing it. The worst part was that while I left ahead of time from home, in order to be there on time, and I was more than 50 minutes before the start, I wasted 25 minutes driving in circles trying to park. That was terrible. On top of that, after I finally parked, I had to queue for the bathrooms for another nearly 20 minutes, which basically left me 3 minutes before the start of the run to “warm up” 😅. Despite all of that, the run went somewhat well; I finished in 56:56, which is a bit slower than the 54:08 from the previous year. To be honest, I’m happy with that score, given things were the way they were. I can definitely do better with some training. In fact, the goal was sub 50, but given the situation, yet again, I’m happy with the result. I had to stop and walk a bit this time between 8k and 10k, because of knee pain, and I wanted to prevent potential injury.

🇧🇬 One month in Bulgaria

The month in Bulgaria was truly magical. On one hand, that was our longest trip together with Anton; on the other hand, it felt perfect, didn’t feel too long at all. In fact, I’ll go on to say that because of the length, it felt a bit less like a holiday trip and more of a coming to the other home trip. Which is really kind of the case.

We were able to see family - my sister was back in Bulgaria now with her husband (they used to live in Cyprus). We also visited my grandma, Anton’s grand grandma. It was so nice to see her again <3.

Velingrad

We were able to spend time with friends and their kids, whom Anton had known from the year before, and they got to play together, while we stayed 3 days at this SPA resort in the Bulgarian mountains in Velingrad.

Nice food, plenty of pool time, walking in the mountain town, riding the waterwheels, awesome views of the mountains. We did a mini trip to the nearby mountain of Rila too, and rode some interesting “mini roller coaster” thingies, and had great grilled food.

While still in the Rila mountains, we visited the bear sanctuary where rescued bears live in a natural environment.

It’s hard to describe why the “slowness” of the trip was so special, but because we didn’t have anything pre-booked and we had enough time, it was chill in its own way. By the time we were wrapping up the mountain part of the trip, we started looking into where to go on the seaside for our first of two seaside trips.

Sozopol

We went to Sozopol almost straight from Velingrad. Basically only spent 1 night in Plovdiv in between. It was soooo nice to dip in the sea and swim! Always the best way to cool off in the summer heat.

Sozopol was very relaxing. We went to the beach twice per day, ate nice food in the local restaurants, which were 10 minute walk away from where we were staying. At the same time, our little hotel was nice and quiet and SUPER close to the beach. Basically, we went down 2 sets of stairs and were at the beach.

We found our favorite ice cream place and became regulars there too :). We also went to the Burgas Zoo on one of the days and saw the capybaras! Something we were super excited about!

We were allowed in and to interact with them, to feed them cabbage, and carefully pet them. Very interesting creatues and it’s been our inside joke for a very long time, so really cool to see capybaras in real life!

And after a lot of swimming and diving with our swimming goggles, “hunting” for shells, jumping in the waves, and playing in the sand, soon the first sea adventure was nearly done, and it was time to go back to Plovdiv for a while.

Plovdiv

I’ve always loved this image:

What it is is the view of the Plovdiv hills from afar. Usually, in nice, clear weather, you can see them from as far as 17km away from the city. But this always makes me feel like I’m coming home. I’ve said it many times before and I’ll always say it but while I may not necessarily always miss Bulgaria, I always miss Plovdiv. It’s absolutely one of the most special cities in the world to me.

I should add that we’ve been moving around with Anton with buses between our trips, mostly, and it’s such a vibe! Very cozy, a bit of nice snacks, chilling in the seats, and soon we’ve reached our destination.

As always, there’s a lot to explore in Plovdiv. We were mostly doing about 15-20k steps per day on average. Visiting family, friends, and all the cool spots.

And after last year, we got Eeyore and Pooh, this year we managed to find Tigger and Piglet, which was one of our major quests!

Kiten

Kiten is a cute little town. To be completely honest, I’m not sure if I have ever been here before. And if I have, maybe once at most. It’s even more south than Sozopol along the Black Sea coast.

Of course, the main activity was being happily at the beach again! Sun and warm water, does it get any better than that? And playing around in the sand. Just genuinely relaxing. Kiten had two beaches, and we visited both of them. But we did go more often to the south beach.

Obviously, we hunted a bunch of seashells again…

… but the real highlight was the 2 kittens we found. They seem to be siblings, and they were so cute and super playful. We actually spent literally hours playing with them over 2-3 different evenings. They really liked to chase a stick that Anton and I would drag along the ground. It was absolutely wholesome!

Finding adorable kittens in Kiten, how about that 😅.

And soon it was time to go back to Plovdiv, Sofia, and then back to Helsinki. Where our plants had survived with the water drippers we had set up, our pepper was now red and not green anymore!

❤️ Love, friendships, family, community

Friendships

I’ve made a new friend this year, someone whom I really value and whom I’ve spent a bunch of time with this year. Someone I’ve learnt a lot from, and I hope I have enriched her life too. “My Bulgarian connection” 😀. Apart from all other things, thanks to her, I’ve been talking a lot more in Bulgarian this year, which was very nice in its own way and also connects to my “return to roots” sub-theme of this year. I’ve interacted more closely with a bunch of other people, too, and I say it over and over again, but I do genuinely appreciate all of you. Makes life a lot more fun and enjoyable, sharing it with others.

Family

We all forget to call our parents more often, I’m sure. Well, hopefully we can do ever so slightly better and try harder to do it more often. As visiting is not always an option in my case, and at least not frequent visits, video calls serve a purpose. But this is more about the quality of it, rather than the quantity. Think about that and call your parents today and tell them that you love them, it’s worth it!

Family is always complicated, I feel, but it’s good to try to appreciate each other as much as possible. It was nice to see my sister and her husband back in Bulgaria this summer, after quite a few years in Cyprus. And my parents went back to Bulgaria just recently as well.

Community

What is community anyway? Your local neighbourhood chaps? The people from work, in some cases? Workout buddies? Gaming buddies? All of the above? For thousands of years, humans have been social creatures, and building communities has been a key and profound way of expressing that. Be it necessary for survival way back in the day, or a “nice bonus” in today’s world. There are discussions online about the loneliness epidemic, and that’s not random. There are a lot of challenges in today’s world that support a more isolated and detached lifestyle from other humans. And it’s not always natural to find the right buddies. This is a huge topic, well worth diving into someday at length. I’m also passionate about it and have something to share. But for today I’d just like to suggest and stress the importance of 3rd places. I’ll always remember how in high school I’d come home from school, literally drop off my backpack at home, pick up the basketball, and head to the local courts. Meet friends, hang out, play streetball, and just chill. That’s a 3rd place. I guess nowadays my gym is my 3rd place and I love that. I feel like a kid there too - I can train with the other folk, chat, work out, improve whatever the focus is on for the day, just have fun. But it’s a nice, relaxing, social environment where I think people are just being themselves. So, as one way of being a part of some community, I suggest 3rd places. Find a place, a club, a hobby you can participate in happily, and just go for it.

Love

I think I found her…

The last part of this year has been a very different experience. I don’t know what happened. There’s been a special someone I’ve spent very naturally, gradually, and progressively more and more hours with. In the setting where time stops. Yeah… I’ve already written about this in journals at length. I’ve analyzed and reasoned with it. The pros and cons, the great parts, and the objections. But in the end, when you draw the line and “tally the numbers”, none of it matters. It still comes down to two things - why time stops when I’m with her, and why do I get lost in her eyes when I look at her?

Distilling the thousands of thoughts in my mind to a few simple and short sentences for the sake of this post is very difficult. And the situation is a bit complicated, too. But really, very simply put, at the end of the day, none of it matters. You either listen to your heart, or you don’t. It will either work out or it won’t. Whatever the case, I have no regrets. I have given in to it and made my choice already. Because at the end of the day, when I’m there with her, and I just AM, it’s simple. Beautiful, relaxing, blissful, easy, comfortable, enjoyable, pleasant, simple, honest, real, unfiltered, connected, charged. What happens next, time will tell…

(and while I always try to document events here as they are, this topic is very dear to my heart and I’m saving a lot of special moments and details just for me and her)

I’ll just say that I’m happy I met you, grateful we shared time together in the way that we did, and whatever the outcome, I’d not have it any other way. It’s been so nicely challenging to participate in our witty discussions, which have been so interesting, all the while getting to know each other.

I could write here more on becoming more cynical of love after long relationship breakups, on healing, on truly feeling ready again, on allowing yourself to be vulnerable and be hurt, and on taking chances. But I won’t :D Perhaps another time we can dive deeper into these topics. Cliff hanger, I know 😉

Walnut hugs Fig 💖

🌳 Return to (the Bulgarian) roots

I’m not even sure how to word this, but a number of different events and experiences have fallen under this umbrella this year. My Bulgarian connection, the Bulgarian trip, and Anton’s curiosity towards the Bulgarian language and history are just a couple of specific examples. My dad has always done a great job of telling me Bulgarian history while I was growing up. All sorts of stories from all sorts of ages. From 681 to the 1990s. And I’ve always found it fascinating. In fact, there was a half-year period in 12th grade when I was so interested in Bulgarian history, and I was studying it as my way of applying to law school in Bulgaria. In the end, I did swap that in favor of pursuing Bulgarian and English language tests as the means of university admission. But I’ve been playing my role now. I’ve been telling stories to Anton as well as I can. And there’s a lot of this “return to the roots” thing that has been happening subconsciously.

For years, I thought I’d never want to go back to live in Bulgaria. The reasons are many, worthy of a small post just on this topic. But the gist of it is that last year, at the end of our trip with Anton to Bulgaria, the days before we came back to Finland, while in Sofia, I “FELT” a lot of change. I “FELT” my homeland again. It’s a nice place. It always has been. It’s always just been the nasty, corrupted politicians who drive people away. The nature is magical. The ground beneath your feet - ancient and meaningful. Which, unironically, super nicely segways to…

💕 I love them both

I do. I decided to stop being tormented by “having to choose” in my mind. “I’ll just love them both”. Who said I have to choose favorites? I don’t wanna. I’m talking about Bulgaria and Finland. I love them both. There’s no denying that both are home to me. For better or worse. And yes, I know, I joke around with Finnish weather (actually, I don’t - it’s really shit, but you only realise it if you’ve ever had actual good weather 😅), but I love Finland in her own way. It’s the home of my son and his birthplace. Therefore, it’s my home. Someone special said to me recently something about contradicting herself with different statements. I really liked her expression, and it made me think. Was it contradicting, or was what she was describing basically… balance? And isn’t that what I’m also trying to describe? But why sometimes do we get stuck in the idea of “having to choose” when it’s very much ok to lean into different things in life, have variance in experiences, and just feel how the different things enhance each other as they allow reset and recovery time to the rest. Very abstract, I know. But being curious, always trying out new things, cause you never know what might stick, I think that’s key.

✨ AI and the spark of engineering

It’s been a bit of time since I last developed side projects this passionately. A huge reason why this is happening now and again is Google’s Antigravity. Finally, an IDE that truly uses AI as a tool to enhance the developer’s experience. We’re at an interesting time in history. AI for building projects currently reminds me of calculators in school. You don’t wanna use it in 1st-4th grade, but once you’ve brushed up on the basics and can handle the math yourself, it’s great to use the calculator to do the number crunching and focus on what really matters - figuring out the solution to the problem. Antigravity handles AI as a tool so well. Gone are the times of randomly pasting stuff into ChatGPT back and forth. Antigravity has AI agents you can use to actually go and do the work, literally running your project locally, having their own browser to click around, develop, and test solutions. The artifacts that Gemini creates inside Antigravity are super useful. Both the implementation plan and the walkthrough, with screenshots and videos of the implementation.

It’s been truly very interesting. So I just accomplish features and work and develop the project further, without having to bog myself down with the details of the implementation. At the same time, I can review the implementation’s code, adjust it, and, of course, if I want to, still make manual code changes. I’m curious what happens next, but in this AI world where every company has been trying to utilize AI as much as possible, and a lot of it has just seemed like wishful thinking and unnecessary hype, now this, this is something. Antigravity is a game-changer and an amazing tool! Let’s see what happens next, but it’s definitely interesting times ahead.

✍️ Content, creativity, inspiration

I’ve always liked making things. Mostly as a hobby, in a way, “pretty pointless”, in fact, this here blog post is a good example of that. I just enjoy putting it together, organizing my thoughts and experiences into it, trying to paint a nice picture of what happened. I am also (not currently actively) working on a book - “Born in Space”. I also write travel blogs that are completely private and unpublished. I have made hip hop songs 20 years ago :) I have written fan fiction. I made my own encyclopedia in a notebook when I was 9 :). So there’s something there in it. For a few years now, I’ve been contemplating starting up a new YouTube channel. I wanna make movies again. But this time different. My previous channel FPVTips was a niche venture and focused, of course, on FPV racing and freestyle drones. This time around, I wanna do something different, but more on this later, if it comes to pass, the idea is not completely settled in my head yet.

I started a mini series of stories on Instagram called “Georgi’s stories” where the idea is super simple - post 365 stories, a year of stories. We’re at around 92 at the time of writing this. So time flies :D But it’s been an interesting learning opportunity. What I don’t like about it is that it forces me to open IG every day, not a big fan of that. I’m not a social media hater; I partake, yes, but I believe we all need to be a lot more present and use social media as a tool and not be completely sucked into it and obsessed by it. Anyway, I’m working on accepting that, for the time being at least, I need to log in every day and post something quick, and yes, I know, you can also schedule posts via some third-party apps and whatnot, but I’m not going for any growth tactics on my account or anything. I just wanna have fun with it, and I just try to put something up every day. It’s not always super creative, in fact, most of my posts are just about daily workouts, which I love anyway, and it’s fine by me :) The point is to be real and unfiltered. And I think I’ll use this mini project as a stepping stone to possibly going back to making more long-form content again in 2026. We’ll see.

Inspiration. The past 2-3 weeks have made me wanna create and write like nothing else before. It’s been a long time (if ever) since I last felt like that. It’s hard to describe, but it’s also very simple to describe. I have a muse. And when you do, things happen. It’s such a special feeling, hard or even impossible to reproduce and cue on demand. But when it happens… wow…

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⬜ Goals for 2026:

• 🇧🇬 Bulgarian trip with Anton
• 📝 Continue slowly writing my book - Born in Space
• 🏃‍♂️ Run Helsinki Midnight Run for the 3rd time (with prep)
• 🏃‍♂️ Hyrox
• 🦺 CrossFit Murph
• 🏋️‍♂️ CrossFit Competition
• 🗣️ Community, friends, family
• 🏋️‍♂️ Training vacation
• 🏀 CrossFit, basketball, table tennis with Anton
• 😄 Smile and have fun
• ♠️ Learn a couple of card magic tricks
• 📷 Complete Georgi’s Stories on IG
• 🎥 Make content

So that’s the goal list. Is it complete, finite, and set in stone? Absolutely not. Is it a guiding light with the most important points well covered? Perhaps. I’d like to think so, to some degree. There might be more items I’ve not put on there. Perhaps, some are even pretty important and truly determining the direction of life and development. One thing is for sure - I want to smile, have fun, beam happiness and love to the ones I care about and most anyone else in between. I want to keep doing the things that make me be me, I want to keep finding the moments where I can really just BE. The real moments, where all else dissipates.

Let’s hope for a healthy and nice 2026, full of pleasant challenges, meaningful connections, and building things while having fun. Like a little kid in a sandbox. Step by step, scoop by scoop, and then, a year from now, hopefully, we can take a look back and take note of all the progress made in various endeavors. The plans are there; the execution will come. But I’d like to end this post with roughly what I started it with: Journey > Destination. What good is the end goal, the outcome of all the effort, if in the process you lose yourself, you burn out, or you feel miserable? Enjoy the ride, stop to smell the roses ;) Take a break. Take a deep breath. We’ll get there eventually, but HOW WE GET THERE MATTERS. So many times, the journey is the gist of it; it’s the true essence of the experience. Life, happening all around us, right now. That journey where you still improve and are always hungry for the next step, for the next bite of challenge, the journey where sometimes you don’t even notice how much you’ve improved until later on, when you take a look back after some time has passed.

So the list above is just a blueprint. How the journey will unfold, and where it leads me, I can’t wait to find out! To a great 2026! Love, Georgi.