Christmas 2025 Reflections: Rest, Recharge, and Wrap Up the Year

Welcome to building better developers, the developer podcast, where we work on getting better step by step professionally and personally. Let's get started. Well, hello and Merry Christmas. Welcome back. We are continuing our actually not working not continuing our season. We're continuing our holiday season right now. We're continuing our holiday as we do every year. But first we are building better developers to develop into a podcast. I am Rob Brodhead, one of the founders of Develop and Or also the founder of RV Consulting where we help you do business better. We assess your business, help you build a roadmap for success. Good thing, bad thing in this holiday season. A good thing is, is that I am wrapping up a year. This has been a very busy year, lots of stuff going on. As we speak, I am not even on the continent. I am like hanging out and having a good old time, enjoying a like mini vacation before I go on a like digital nomad tour for quite a while. Hopefully as I was just talking in the pre show here a little bit, roaming with Rob, we will have like lots of cool stuff out there. And we've got all kinds of our things being shared as far as what we're doing and where we're going. Really this has been a fun time. The good thing is like building up to this and all the new toys and figuring out how to like be a digital nomad and how to like take all of my stuff to a very small amount. Bad thing is, is that it has also been very taxing. It is very difficult to be like, you know, to have all of these cool toys and say, well, these are the ones that I really need to take. Those aren't as cool. Things like just like, you know, having a an emotional support, you know, DS that happens be sitting over there that you now no longer have with you, things of that nature. So that has been, has been a fun year. It's been a productive year and I'm really looking forward to 2026 because also we've got a lot of cool episodes with my co-host who is now going to introduce himself. Hey everyone, it's Michael Mlach. I'm one of the co-founders of developer building better developers. I'm also the founder of InVision Q8 where we work with companies who are tired of software that is holding them back. We build and test tools tailored to your needs so that your software can run smoother, scale easier and stop wasting your time, especially when the tech doesn't work. So check us out at InVisionQA.com. Good thing, bad thing. I'll start with the bad thing. I still got to come up with a better slogan than that because I still am fighting with my dog. But anyway, Merry Christmas, everyone. Happy holidays. It's that time of year again. Jingle bells, frosty, hot chocolate and lots of sweets and good cooking. And oh, I'm so happy to just kick today. Looks like it's going to be a cold one again and get the digital fireplace going or our electric fireplace if we still have power. So yeah, so the gift Michael is going to give me in the year ahead is he's going to wrap that. He's going to take that little intro and crank it down to like five seconds or something like that. So we've been trying. That's one thing you've done this year. Our gift to you is we're trying to get some of the the self-promotional stuff and things like that that we should do because we were working on our business as well. But also to make that like easier so that you guys can dive in and get to the core content, the core content today being Merry Christmas. Enjoy whether you celebrate it or not. I think most of the places in the world, at least today, is a holiday of some sort or another. So you get to chill out, hang out, do what you do best, whether you go out and eat Mexican today or I guess it's Chinese is the big thing. Is he Chinese on Christmas? Whether you're a big fan of like hanging out with your family, whether you're watching movies of any sort, whether you're into, I don't know, horror movies all the way to like Christmas movies. Big difference between like Elf, the Christmas movie and some of the horror movies. I can't remember what was the gnome or whatever the little guy is, the dwarf leprechaun. That was it. The old leprechaun movies. Enjoy a little bit of time off. If nothing else, it is towards the end of the year. And yeah, it's depending on where you're at. You may be very much a love the holiday season, stuff like that. Maybe you don't. One of the things that I've actually lived both of those lives in my lifetime, there's a period where I was just like didn't really want that big a deal. Don't care that much. And I've also been many years where I'm like it's like a great time where I've got like the Christmas me right now. I've got like Christmas music going all the time and always enjoyed setting up the house and doing all that kind of stuff. But I did always find that this time of year was really good for productivity because you have people on holiday, you have people away, you have all these things going on. So now you don't have as many people distracting you from getting things done. So hopefully that means that you've been able to get your job done. So now you can take a day off and go like as I've done many years, try to like at least spend a little time to actually go play like my favorite game that just came out or something like that or go catch up on a Netflix movie or show that I needed to binge that I wanted to catch up on. This is. This is really a great time to be alive. We've got so many things that are out there. We have so many fun distractions. Like take a little time and allow yourself to be distracted. I think what I want to talk a little bit about is like favorite like, you know, Christmas Day kinds of things from the past and just sort of we could reminisce a little bit as we take a few minutes of your time. Thank you for being there for being here. I will ask you, I guess I'll add to one thing is. And I think Michael's maybe even a little frustrated. These kind of things is like I do holiday specials. It's like the thing I've said, like I got the the gobble and the Christmas thing years and years ago. And I'm like, those are the marks of like it's now holiday season. It helps remind me that we are in that season as we're doing the podcast. But from a Christmas Day like my favorite, I've had a couple of Christmas days where we got up, do the gift because we'd always do gifts on Christmas morning. You do that kind of stuff. You get everybody up and the big honking breakfast, all kinds of stuff. It's like you just get all of the breakfast foods and stuff like that. Have a nice big breakfast. And then you basically are comatose for the next five or six hours where we're like listening to music, watching a little bit of usually there'd be like maybe a movie on in the background, but usually because I've always had gamers in my family, there were games that were running for like the next three days straight or somebody was always like playing whatever they got for Christmas. Those are like those are great memories is just being able to like realize they have nothing to do with work, nothing to do with like whatever my job was or anything like that. But it's actually just going out and just actually enjoying life for a little bit. So those are a couple of things I was going to throw out. How much you like? Yeah, my big thing today is, you know, it's family day. So we're going to spend a lot of time together as a family. Yes, there'll be some game time because my wife's going to end up watching some football games I don't want to watch, which is fine, because that's when I'll turn on Pokemon and on my Pokemon ZA and maybe do some shiny Pokemon, Pokemon hunt. Food, we're probably going to cook the night before. We cooked last night, Christmas Eve. And normally we eat all night long and then we have leftover. So Christmas Day tends to be more like sandwiches, just kicking back, relaxing, sleeping in. And so the kids are no longer living with us. They'll come over probably later this afternoon and we'll open up gifts and then probably have some food and then just back and relax and have a nice, quiet day. It is nice to do that occasionally. Yeah, the food we mentioned a lot. Years ago, I managed to slowly move my annual physical checkup kind of thing started like it was right before Thanksgiving. The next thing I know, it was right after Thanksgiving and then right around like for quite a while. So I finally had to like just not go on time so that I could shift it outside of the holiday seasons, because every time I'd be doing really good. And then I hit the holidays and it's like, you know, everything goes through because I there's I don't eat mirrors. Got to have like the greasier foods. I have a lot of sweets. I gain a lot of weight. I don't exercise enough. I drink and like all the things that are not good for you physically. And to do that and then jump in to have a doctor to look at you and say, wow, you really are not in good shape. It's like, I need to get away from it. So you need to move to June like I did. Yeah, exactly. I need to get it like right when I'm in like the peak form. So it's great. And the first time I moved off of it, it was like, you lost like whatever it was, seven or eight pounds from the last time. I'm like, yeah, it's funny how you do that when you're not right at the end of like having a big old turkey feast and stuff like that. And that is like that. But that's part of the thing is like enjoying just like the leftovers are great because you don't have to cook again for a couple of days. You cook and cook and cook. And it's like a big family event. And then you're just like, OK, now we just like nibble for the next. You know, we snack for days. We have like turkey sandwiches or whatever we got leftover. And, you know, just have a good old time and enjoy it for a little bit and appreciate the holidays. And you're in London right now, aren't you? Yep. So time shift and everything. So it's going to be a whole different experience as I go into 2026 as I'm wrapping up the year. London for Christmas, Lisbon for New Year's and then starting Portugal for the first few months of 2026. And then we will see where we go there. But already looking at doing being in Ireland for St. Patrick's Day, you know, some things like that. They're like, hey, we're going to like we're going to try some of these things out and explore some of the areas of the world that we haven't explored. And I would say that, you know, we're done with Nashville, but Nashville changes so much we could. We could keep exploring Nashville for the rest of our lives. It feels like this. I don't know how many places we've been to that now have been replaced with something else or gotten moved or or there's new stuff. So, yeah, there's lots of life out there to live. So we're going to do it in 2026 and hopefully you guys are doing the same. Closer thoughts as we wish you a Merry Christmas. Yes. Merry Christmas, everyone. Happy New Year. And we will talk to you soon. So for those of you guys hanging out on the YouTube channel, sorry. No bonus material because we're going to go celebrate and we're hoping you do the same. But thank you so much for hanging out with us. Thank you for yet another year. As we look at the New Year's special, we'll be coming up here soon enough. And we'll talk a little bit more about like planning for the year ahead. But until then, like, have some like kick back, have some eggnog or whatever it is, a good, you know, nice meal, maybe a little nap, watch a couple of movies, chill out and take care of yourself. So go out there and have yourself a great day, a great week, great end of the year. And we will talk to you next time. This was sponsored by our consultant, your partner in building smarter, scalable tech from startups to established teams. Our consulting helps you turn tech chaos into clarity with proven roadmaps and hands on expertise. Visit our B-S and S dot com to start your next step forward. Also sponsored by Envision QA. They help businesses take control of their software by focusing on what matters most, quality, reliability and support you can count on. Find out more at EnvisionQA.com. Thanks for tuning in to the Develop the Newer podcast, where we're all about building better developers and better careers. I'd love to hear your thoughts or feedback. So drop a note to info at Develop the Newer dot com. Be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, YouTube or wherever you listen. And remember, a little bit of effort every day adds up to a great success. Keep learning, keep growing, and we'll see you in the next episode.