Dear ones, to get me in the mood for this article, I read the 2024 annual review again. 2024 was a vague year that I didn’t get a feeling for until the end and that didn’t feel easy. „For 2025, I want more lightness“, it says. And also that I want to find a new major professional project in 2025. Now I’m sitting here at the end of December 2025 and I can reveal: Many resolutions have not been fulfilled.
2025 started professionally as tough as 2024 ended. Contracts weren’t renewed, budgets were cut further, for the first time Lisa and I seriously considered whether this blog could still exist at all or whether we should look for permanent positions…While Lisa published her book in autumn and it even landed on the SPIEGEL bestseller list, my hoped-for boost in success failed to materialise. For a long time, I felt no creativity, was paralysed and didn’t know what to do with myself professionally. By the middle of the year, I had a good concept in my pocket, I contacted hundreds of people, but always got the answer: „Great project, but we don’t have any money for it“. It was gruelling, demotivating, I feared I would disappear into insignificance. I realised how my professional self-worth was sinking and sinking and sinking. For the first time, I felt a twinge in my heart when others told me about their professional successes.
When we then had to accept a major financial loss, I had a mid-range nervous breakdown during a team call and burst into tears in front of the camera. That was very unusual for me – it had never happened to me before in my professional career. It was probably so bad that Lisa ordered me a bouquet of flowers at that very moment, which was delivered by express. The card said: „This has nothing to do with you. Anyone who gets to work with you can count themselves lucky.“ Phew, so sweet, but I found it hard to believe …
Review of the year: A lot of professional doubt
I’ve struggled a lot professionally this year, cried a lot and often felt really hopeless. Patience is not my strong point, and I realised that again. Things slowly started to pick up again in the autumn and we tentatively asked ourselves: „Maybe we’ve now bottomed out?“ I actually have interested parties for two new projects, the contracts haven’t been signed yet and it wouldn’t make me „rich“ either, but I would learn new things and would be extremely keen to do both. Maybe there will be a conciliatory end to the year after all?
I have now really reached the middle of my life, I will be 45 years old in 2026. And for the first time in my life, I feel something like finiteness. For the first time, I realise that certain things in my life will no longer happen, that some trains have left the station. I stand in front of the mirror and realise that I’m no longer 30. I hear young colleagues and think: „Wow, I have no idea about that at all“
Privately, 2025 was a good year in our nuclear family with no extreme lows (apart from a few days in hospital due to pneumonia). In my circle of family and friends, however, there were and still are two severe strokes of fate that have taken their toll on me emotionally and where I can only hope that I have provided and continue to provide as much support as possible.
Of course, there were also some wonderful moments in 2025. We celebrated Easter with my extended family, i.e. with my four siblings and their families, which was very special. We had a fantastic, totally relaxed summer holiday with friends in Apulia. My younger brother married a wonderful woman. In October, I went surfing for five days with my sister in Portugal. It’s a dream I’ve had for many years and we finally realised it. Those were wonderful days, which were very intense and still resonate today.
The older one was confirmed and is doing so cool and great. The older son was scouted by the DFB, what a thrill. My little daughter dances with passion, the little one has been settled into daycare and is very happy there. My husband has a great new project and while many couples around us are splitting up, we still really like each other.
I have a lot to be grateful for and I’m very aware of that. When I fall, I have people who give me a hand to get up. Lisa and I were also a very good team in 2025, we encouraged each other, scolded each other and relieved each other. When we saw each other in person in November, I realised once again: what we’ve been doing for 12 years, someone should copy us first.
Any good end-of-year review ends with a look ahead to the next year. But this year, I’ve learnt that you can’t plan everything, that you can make plans, but that in the end there’s always a bit of luck and fate involved. And to be completely honest, I’m also a bit blank when it comes to resolutions. I’m simply still searching for my path. And maybe that’s why 2025 wasn’t so bad after all, because I felt it so often this year: Fortunately, I never walk this path alone.
