It was a wonderful evening in Rome. I was waiting for the check after having the best carbonara ever at a 120-year-old restaurant. I decided to check my phone and saw a message on LinkedIn:
Hey man, just saw you were part of the layoff. I am so sorry.
I waited until we were outside the restaurant to tell my wife. It felt like a cold plunge, but oddly enough, I also felt excitement for what could come next. It was time for my biggest transformation in seven years since I started working remotely.
Three years ago, living in Europe was only a dream. Now I’m in Portugal with my wife and our three cats, and even on the hardest days of 2025, that was enough to be grateful for how far we had come.
Top 3 lessons
Focus → Progress
I was at a train station. I waited for what felt like days through sun and rain. I was meant to meet someone who had the answer about what to do next. As the person finally arrived and their face came out of the shadows, I realized it was me.
That’s a dream I had after a coaching session. After the layoff, I talked with as many people as possible. And while I was moved by people’s empathy and willingness to help, I was also overwhelmed by all the ideas.
I learned saying no lowers the noise and allows space to hear your own signal. Most of the time you don’t need more information, but reflection.
Intention → Meaning
During the coffee break at a WordPress event an expert in real estate who wanted someone to help him with a website cornered me. Excited to learn I used to work for Automattic, he asked me if I was freelancing. I nodded without thinking. What followed felt like a job interview I never agreed to. The coffee break ended and I walked away.
Afterward I felt deeply frustrated at myself. Under social pressure I defaulted to an old identity even though I had spent the last six months diving into the indie app developer world.
Our intention works as a compass that prevents us from getting lost in the continuation bias where we stay on the same path because we are already too invested.
Shipping → Identity
Since university, I dreamed about putting a piece of software out in the world. But I never felt ready. There was always something missing: knowledge, permission, authority; the list in my mind was endless.
Eight years later, I got the title of professional developer. I had finally ‘become.’ However, after a few months in the role, I realized the skills I relied on every day were the same ones I’d always had: curiosity, problem-solving, sleuthing, and a thirst for learning.
I didn’t need to know everything, just needed enough to get to version one. After shipping Minder, I realized I never needed the title to be a developer. I just needed to build.
Highlights
Proudest accomplishments
- Launched Minder, my first iOS app.
- Read more non-fiction books than ever in my life.
- Moved away from a linear mindset into one of experimentation.
Biggest challenges
- Defining/building a new identity.
- Allowing time for reflection when procrastination hits.
- Balancing time between building and promoting.
Significant Events
- Participated in a hackathon that gave me the deadline I needed to ship Minder. It also became a two-month experiment in building in public.
- Collaborated with one of my favorite podcasters, Eric Zimmer, to create a personalized experience for The One You Feed community inside Minder.
- Joined a coaching group led by Mike Schmitz (from the Focused podcast), where I learned about creating with intention and building trust with an audience.
Relationships
I made new friends, and got to play board games with some of them on my birthday. A year ago, fresh off our move from Latin America, that would have felt impossible.
Travel
I traveled to Italy, France, and Spain. Growing up in Ecuador, these were places that existed only in movies and books.
Media
Here are my favs:
Watched
Listened
Linkin Park From Zero, special mention for Cut the Bridge
Experiments ahead
- Professional life: I closed an important cycle, had the opportunity to explore, build, and reflect. Now I feel ready and energized for a new challenge at a new company.
- Intellectual life: While I have never stopped learning, doing personal retreats and reading more is changing how I approach life. I’ll experiment grouping books by topics for deeper reflection.
- Spiritual life: I’ve been doing guided meditations for years, and learned about a new kind of meditation from the Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself book. So I started experimenting with it and will share my findings.
- Personal projects: Last year all my focus went to building. I’m shifting focus to getting Minder in front of more people. To do this, I’ll experiment with the ideas from the Everything but the Code book.
Almost a year after that evening in Rome, I’m grateful for the people and the experiences that supported me and helped me grow. Sometimes fear still strikes back. But now I can pause, take a deep breath, and remind myself to do my best and trust.