As I'm writing this during the holiday break at the end of 2025, I'm thinking about how this year has gone and where I want to go in 2026.
There was something that popped onto my social media algorithm that prompted me to really think about this.
The Japanese have a word for this - misogi - which means to purify oneself. However it's taken on a different meaning in the modern age.
It really means the act of taking on a challenge that you have a 50/50 chance of success on. It's meant to be "inward-facing" and not publicized, but a part of my Misogi is to work on things in public (more later).
So, to put it out there: In 2026, I want to build and open-source at least one project per month.
Some relevant context: I'm not a software engineer by trade. I'm a security engineer who likes to build things. Over the years, I've shipped internal tools that ended up getting real adoption and driving actual business impact - dashboards, automation, CLI utilities. But most of that work has lived behind a corporate firewall.
This challenge is something I want to tackle for a few reasons:
- First, I want to use the force multiplier that is AI to learn new things.
- Second, I want to build a portfolio of work that I can share.
- Third, I want to keep learning - new frameworks, new stacks, new languages.
I don't have a backlog of project ideas ready to go. But after building out a CLI tool for AWS privileged access and a few one-off MCP servers, I've noticed a pattern in what I find most rewarding: finding a problem that I, a colleague, or someone in my network is actually facing - and building something to solve it.
The open-source part is intentional. It's partly about accountability, and partly about building a portfolio of work that I can share.
I think this is going to be both challenging and fun to do this year!
To follow along, keep an eye on this blog and my GitHub for updates.