The main value of major celebrations (NY/birthdays/you name it), for me, is the pause — those non-negotiable extra moments to stop and reflect in the big rush that is life. As someone who grew up in Eastern Europe, I’m sure I’m not the only one who tends to underappreciate the good things happening to me.
I used to follow a simple rule: each new birthday has to feel better than the last. That “better” is subjective — a blend of happiness, energy, work, and personal wins, plus a healthy dose of randomness and serendipity.
This year blew past every expectation:
🌟 A few personal updates (keeping those off the internet for now) that massively changed and improved, hopefully, my life
🚀 Launching No Cap and watching it go so viral (2M impressions and counting) that we've been told multiple times half the venture industry saw her demo
✈️ Abundance of mindful travel and living between places: weeks- and months-long coworking trips as well as the deep self-reflection through my first 10-day Vipassana (will drop a link to my full guide post in the comments)
🎤 A bunch of amazing events I threw and/or participated in, including speaking at the biggest European startup conf (Slush) in front of hundreds of ppl
🤝 All in all, I probably met 3x more new people than in any other year of my life
And just to be clear — many times things went wrong and shit hit the fan. But today is not about focusing on these.
Every day, I feel hopeful and excited about the future, increasingly accelerated by AI — sometimes even limited by how much of what I want to do fits into 24 hours. I’m incredibly lucky and grateful to have so many ideas and things I could be working on — and, more importantly, the resources to build and fund them.
If you’re still reading this, thanks for following along. I appreciate you. And happy birthday to me.