Hi, Johan here.
I have been bullied by my mentor into finally posting something here. He says it builds character. I say it builds anxiety. But since you're reading this, he clearly won.
Here is the autopsy of my year.
The Garbage Fire (Part 1)
If you want a summary of my luck in 2024, here it is: I went to the Dior Cafe after buying a small gift for my gf, bought a coffee, and immediately won a game for "Two Free Coffees." I had just finished drinking coffee. I was vibrating. I did not need more coffee. That is my life in 2025: winning the lottery on the one day you don't need the money.
Beyond the caffeine overdose, things were generally unfortunate:
Business gone: My company closed down two legacy businesses. I feel partially to blame. I also had to scale down a studio that took me months of blood and sweat to build because AI decided to change the game overnight. That was fun.
Bureaucracy hell: I don't want to talk about paperwork, but f*ck it. Still no PR. Apparently, the Canadian government doesn't place a high value on "in-Canada focus." I am currently being ghosted by a nation.
Physical state: I have a tension headache that has lasted approximately 365+ days.
The Bounce Back (Part 2)
However, I am told that great people are made by how they bounce back from failure. Or maybe that's just what we tell ourselves to feel better. Either way, the year wasn't a total wash.
The Numbers: I made decent money. Probably up to $100k+ after tax. I also lost a lot of "dumb money." I'd feel bad buying a $50 t-shirt but losing $5k over an options trade is...pretty normal. At the end of the day, they are just numbers on a screen. I can't eat them.
The Home Team: My family is healthy. My girlfriend is still here (somehow). I am forever grateful for their patience.
The Hustle: Business is thriving again. I shook hands "virtually" with over 20 C-suite executives this year. I even met with the COO of Opendoor! I bought a new car and moved into a bigger place. The American Dream, but in Canada, and without the PR.
Korea: I went to Korea. It was cool figuratively.
The Realization: I realized I actually enjoy the grind. I logged crazy hours, probably 10+ a day. But I also learned the hard way that working long hours does not equal efficiency. I keep mistaking "being busy" for "doing well." They are not the same thing.
New Responsibility: Promoted to Executive Assistant to the CEO. Sounds cool but tons of work...
So, that's the update. I'm tired, I'm caffeinated, and I'm still here.
See you next post (unless the paperwork takes me out first).
Appendix: The Dior Coffee Probability (Because Why Not)
OK so the Dior coffee thing has been living rent-free in my head. What are the actual odds of winning a "Two Free Coffees" game at a luxury cafe on the exact day you already had coffee? Let me overthink this with math I just learned.
Let be the event of winning the game and be the event that you already consumed coffee that day. I want the probability of the maximally useless outcome:
They're independent (Dior doesn't know about my caffeine intake), so we can just multiply. Assuming the game has a win rate (typical spin-the-wheel promo) and I drink coffee before noon roughly 85% of days:
About 10.6%. Not astronomically rare. But it felt rare because of a cognitive bias I've been reading about: the availability heuristic. Unlikely-feeling events that happen to you personally get mentally filed as "impossible."
More interesting: what's the expected value of a Dior cafe visit? Let the coffee cost , the free-coffee prize value , and the probability of winning :
Every Dior coffee visit has an expected cost of $9 after accounting for the lottery. That's a 25% effective discount. Not bad for a luxury cafe. But here's the thing — I only went because I was already in the store buying a gift. The coffee was an impulse.
Which brings us to the real math of my year. If I model my 2025 as a random walk — some months up, some months down — the cumulative trajectory looks like:
where is the net outcome of month . With (I did end up net positive) but (the variance was enormous), the path looks terrifying even when the destination is fine. The probability of the path dipping below zero at some point during the year, even with positive drift:
For my numbers — let's say /month net, /month variance, final — the probability of hitting zero at some point during the year is:
92% chance of feeling like a failure at some point during the year, even though the year ended positive. That explains a lot, actually.
The math says: a volatile year with positive drift will almost certainly feel terrible in the middle, even if it ends well. The feeling of drowning is not evidence that you're actually drowning. Sometimes you're just in the dip of a random walk that trends up.
Anyway. That's probably more math than a life update deserves. But I just learned about random walks and reflection principles and I needed somewhere to put it.
Johan (December 2025)