Howdy Friends,

Do not be surprised to see me again so soon. I missed you.

This letter is a short pause before the year ends. A moment to wrap up my 2025 and honestly share how my career journey has been so far.

If I am being real, 2025 felt a bit lost for me in tech. It was a year of unfinished plans, delayed goals, and quiet doubts.

But that is part of the journey.

This year was the moment I made a clear decision. I wanted to grow from being just a cloud engineer into becoming a cloud architect.

Writing to you here is also part of that journey. Thinking clearly. Explaining ideas simply. Sharing what I learn as I grow.

Once I made that decision, many things started to change.

I began building my personal brand on the internet with the name cloudwithalon.

I did not have a perfect plan. I still do not. But I knew one thing. Visibility creates opportunity. And the only way to get visible was to start showing up.

I wrote my first LinkedIn post after a long time. Then another. And another.

I started writing blogs on cloudwithalon.com about the technology I am learning.

I became active on X, sharing daily learnings, thoughts, and small lessons from my work.

I created a YouTube channel and started making videos focused on cloud architecture concepts and real world thinking.

And finally, I started this letter(Substack) to document my journey and share it with people walking the same path.

By being active on these platforms, my only goal is to learn, share, and repeat consistently. Every post, video, and article is just a small step in that same direction.

I also completed the AWS Developer certification as a wrap up achievement for 2025, even though it should have been done in 2024. Better late than never. In a future episode, I will share how I prepared and what the exam experience was like.

Talking about my work, I am currently leading one of the biggest projects in the cloud infrastructure department. This project has tested my technical skills, my decision making, and my patience. It started in March 2025 and is expected to complete in Q2 of 2026. If I do not deliver, I might be jobless. Just kidding. Maybe.

I will definitely share more about this project because it is shaping up to be my biggest achievement and the strongest footprint I will leave in my current organization.

Looking back at 2025, even though it was not my best year, I achieved a lot. More importantly, I feel like I am on the right path. This journey is about growing with intention and becoming a little better every day.

For 2026, I will list the achievements I plan to work toward and share them with you soon. This newsletter will be the place where I track progress honestly, share lessons openly, and reflect on what worked and what did not.

At the end of the year, we will look back together and see how the journey truly went.

Thank you for being here and walking this journey with me.

More to come.

Alon Shrestha