Goodbye, 2025 & Hello, 2026!

As we come to the close of 2025, it’s time for another reflection post. It’s been another pretty good year!

Professionally, I continued to be blessed with an excellent team, pretty much the same team from last year, as I had yet another year-long engagement this year. I continue to be grateful for the support and encouragement I get from my mentors/sponsors, Bernardo, Chris, and Joydeep! In addition, this year, I forged a closer connection with Felipe, which also gave me some personal satisfaction as I tried to help him through some personal struggles. It’s been a challenging year in terms of the work itself, having closed the Clearwater project and then completed the Constellation project. Both had their challenges, including high expectations and some quirky clients that made it no easier. I also started working with Chris again, after 3 years! I have taken up the leadership of one of the two Industry Proficiency workstreams for Chris. I am really looking forward to leading this team to help shape Chris’s vision for this initiative. I also continued building on my mentorship relationship with Alyssa, which is also extremely satisfying personally. Its a refreshing support outlet as we both deal with the pressures of crazy schedules and tough clients!

Personally, it’s been an amazing year! I travelled to three new countries! Babi and I travelled to Norway in the Fall and to Morocco and Egypt in the winter! I was also meant to go to Iceland in Spring but due to work, I had to skip that trip. I missed out on the Northern lights, but the trips that I did get to take were absolutely incredible! Norway was just beautiful landscapes! Babi and I both love the water, and Norway was just that, beautiful Fjords! The views that we saw are not something I will forget anytime soon! I also took some of my best photographs here as the scenere way just amazing! Morocco was so lively and filled with my favourite thing – arts and crafts! The night we spent in the Sahara Desert was out of this world! Seeing the sunset and sunrise in the desert is another out-of-this-world experience! The surprise element in that trip was the small town of Ifrane, Morocco’s own Switzerland, and due to some sheer luck, our timing of visiting that town was perfect! Egypt – as one can imagine, it was a dream trip for a while because of all the history! While the Pyramids (Giza, Dashur and Saqqara) did not disappoint in terms of the scale and sheer marvel of the engineering and effort that must have gone into building them thousands of years ago, what blew me away was the carvings and hieroglyphs in the temples and tombs in Upper Egypt (Luxor and Aswan). We seemed to hit bad luck as we couldn’t see the museums in Cairo, but we did manage to squeeze in the recent Tutankhamun exhibit set up in the Grand Egyptian Museum. My most precious takeaways from this trip, though, were the stories that I collected from all the different guides (some of them were actually quite impressed by how I already knew about some of the lesser known Pharoahs and asked about so much more than regular tourists did)!

Lastly, it was yet another year of living without Mummum. I missed her particularly on our trips this year! She would have loved all three of these countries! Babi and I, too, spent the most time together this year since I moved out of my home 11 years ago! We met up in Norway, then he came to the US with me and stayed all the way until our Morocco and Egypt trip, after which he went back, making it really hard to go back to living alone again! Having him around, along with the pups, makes the house feel complete! Speaking of pups, my snuggle bunny, Whisky, turned 9 this year! While sometimes she shows signs of her arthritis acting up, I am so thankful that she still has her puppy energy, and she continues to remain my squishy stuffed toy! My Luca is still the best hug machine there can be! His sweet, gentle and innocent nature continues to amaze me, even though it’s been 7 years with this fuzzball! I still cannot believe these two have been with me all these years!

Overall, I am very thankful for this year, but I hope 2026 is even better! Goodbye, 2025 & Hello, 2026!