What This Year 2025 Quietly Taught Me
What this year stripped away, what it revealed, and what it quietly rebuilt.
Personal Reflection — 2025
At the beginning of this year, 2025, I never imagined that everything would end this way.
But then again, I’ve never really taken the time to plan my years. I used to simply live and let myself be carried by the current. That’s still the case today — at least halfway.
I don’t try to control everything, but I now take time to reflect and think more clearly about what I will do next.
And in the present moment, I try to stay focused and live fully in the now.
What This Year Left Me With
I started the year as usual. One morning like any other, without much enthusiasm.
To be honest, I don’t feel particularly joyful on celebratory days. For me, it’s just another day. One day more, one day less.
I went to work.
I spent the beginning of the year thinking about how to make more money without working myself to exhaustion. I first took courses from so-called gurus offering ready-made solutions, but deep down I felt it didn’t resonate with me.
I spent $8,297 using credits on this kind of training. A significant amount. But it wasn’t a complete loss. I didn’t find what I was looking for, but I learned lessons that helped me get to where I am today.
These people helped broaden my perspective. They helped ground my vision and give it some structure, and for that, I am grateful.
The Turning Point
One day, I woke up late in the afternoon. I work night shifts at an Amazon warehouse, so I sleep during the day. I stepped into the shower to get ready to go back to work. And there, I saw myself in the mirror.
I felt disgusted. Miserable. Poor.
That moment pushed me to look for solutions — real, lasting solutions. And that’s when I finished my first book on personal finance.
Books I Read or Listened to This Year
The first was Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki.
I started it hoping to find a way to make more money, but in reality, there is no miracle solution. Still, that book became my first step toward myself.
Then I continued with Cashflow Quadrant, also by Robert Kiyosaki. It helped me better visualize my financial life and put words to what I was feeling.
Like the first book, it was another step inward, because these books talk a lot about mindset in investing — something I had never really thought about before.
After that, I read or listened to more personal development books:
How to Win Friends and Influence People — Dale Carnegie
Think and Grow Rich — Napoleon Hill
Start With Why — Simon Sinek
The 48 Laws of Power — Robert Greene
Stillness Is the Key — Ryan Holiday
Meditations — Marcus Aurelius
It’s true that for some people, this may not seem like much. But for me, it’s a huge step.
Do you know how many books I had read or listened to before this? Zero. None.
I’ve always listened to speakers like Jim Rohn, Brian Tracy, and others. I learned through people, through the world, through music and cinema.
My reflections mostly come from those sources — from my imagination and from lived experience.
What I Did This Year
I enrolled in a course on multifamily real estate investing, but after a few weeks, I felt completely lost. The course was interesting, of course, and I learned good things from it, but I felt disconnected from myself. Or maybe from my illusion of financial freedom.
So I quit, even though I had paid in full.
Naturally, I tried to speak with those in charge about a possible partial refund, but they brushed me off. In the end, I let it go.
I also created a new LLC, which I named Pillaris Legacy Holding LLC, in honor of my father’s story. Pillaris as a variation of “pillar,” and legacy for what he passed on to me. You can read the story on the company’s website (pillarislegacy.com). This also reminds me that I need to completely update that site.
I created it at a time when I wanted to develop a product before focusing fully on writing.
I also published a novel — a fiction-essay. A particular hybrid form. I’ve always believed that using a model or story to explain a concept helps people understand it better. That’s why I like using illustrations and life experiences in my writing.
For this novel, I hadn’t yet lived through certain things, so I created a character and a fictional story to share reflections on a non-fiction concept.
And that book changed everything for me.
I had always avoided writing romantic stories or personal essays, hiding behind fiction. Maybe because I wasn’t ready to face myself.
When I wrote that fiction-essay, everything felt obvious. The time had finally come to confront myself. I began seeing myself differently and started understanding my life and what I was going through more clearly. That’s when I decided to write more about personal development, using my memory and lived experience within each theme.
Writing and The Mirror Room
The process always begins the same way for me. I observe something in others or in my surroundings, and I start imagining how it could be understood differently. My mind then looks for a way to help others understand — only to end up teaching myself what I hadn’t yet seen.
I realized that when I try to clarify something for someone else, I usually end up clarifying it for myself.
That’s how I created The Mirror Room — the most important project of my year. I write to understand myself, and I share these mirrors with others, hoping they can see themselves more clearly, just as writing helps me see myself directly.
I then published a second reflection on identity — a fragment, a fraction: understanding identity.
And at the end of the year, I published a short collection of ten poems where Love is personified.
What I Discovered About Myself
This year, I am more aware of who I am. I learned to recognize my nature. Before, I would have struggled or felt ashamed to admit or accept certain traits of my identity. Today, I’m beginning to see them clearly and fully assume them.
I am a sensitive person. But I saw what excessive sensitivity caused in my family, so very early in life I learned to keep my distance as a form of protection. Over time, I think I distanced myself emotionally too much, becoming somewhat disconnected. Today, I try to reconnect with others in a healthy way, while still protecting that armor of emotional insensitivity that was assigned to me as a child and that I now consciously accept.
My poem “The Insensitive Sensitive” describes this state well.
I am also someone who tends to dramatize — not in a bad way. I like simplicity, but my mind dramatizes easily. If someone tells me they have something to tell me later or tomorrow, I overthink it and often imagine the worst. I don’t like that, but many people aren’t aware of how it affects me, so I don’t blame them.
I consider myself a realist. I try to see both possibilities — good and bad. But my mind often drags me toward negativity.
Recently, I discovered that closing my eyes, breathing, and questioning myself can help calm these mental storms and bring them to a stop.
One day at work, someone told me they had something to tell me, but only face-to-face. I didn’t have a particular relationship with this person. During my breaks — when I write, reflect, sometimes meditate, or watch videos or read Substack, depending on my mood — I felt completely empty and disconnected, with frustration hovering over my mind.
So I closed my eyes and began questioning myself. I created a mantra-poem, “Why?”, a series of questions that name emotions without answering them. And it helped me calm down and regain clarity.
I am also someone who is honest, funny, and sometimes too serious.
I discovered that I can be selfish at times, and indifferent as well. I have a very good memory — sometimes too good, if you know what I mean.
I also enjoy talking a lot, sometimes to myself. Words without meaning that, I realize, often allow a poem to emerge.
Many of the poems I’ve written recently were born this way. I start by rambling alone, saying incoherent phrases without direction, just trying to rhyme them. And suddenly, a quatrain forms perfectly. From there, I begin to write around that idea.
Most of my poems were born this way.
A Final Realization
I also believe I might have ADHD. This idea came to me while reading articles on Substack. The author’s life resonates deeply with my own way of living, and I see others talk about it as well. But I had no real understanding of what it was.
So I did research and asked ChatGPT to list common ADHD traits. I realized I could identify with almost all of them.
I think I might be a person with ADHD — though I’m not certain yet. And that possibility could truly change my perspective on life.
When we become more aware of ourselves, inner peace and freedom become increasingly accessible.
There are many other small details in my year 2025, but these are the most important ones for me.
I end this year with the affirmation of a belief I hold deeply: nothing is inherently good or bad. Whether it is a system, a person, a trait, or an idea. As Marcus Aurelius said, if something is natural, it cannot be bad.
What makes the difference is intention — and how it is used.
I am neither good nor bad. And I don’t wish to be either.
As I often like to repeat: I simply like being myself. Consciously. Fully.
And I want to be able to accept others, and things, for what they are — without trying to change them.
The Mirror Room will continue to be a space for that.
I can already feel the excitement of what this new year will bring.
Can you?
And you,
how did this year feel for you?
what did it teach you about yourself?
Wishing you a peaceful end to the year and a happy new year, filled with clarity, joy, blessings, and good health.
Warmly,
Odel A.
I drink to that ( tea,but it still counts:))
I think we mirror each other in many ways. We just have to allow ourselves to be seen. And to accept ourselves as we are. I'm glad you're continuing your journey here, on Substack,and into 2026.