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things I changed my mind about in 2025
not a year in review (that's next week)—just a reminder that we’re allowed to revise shit, including ourselves
Laura Winberry
December 23, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes
gm and welcome to issue 49—as always, thanks for being here. 🏴☠️
Last week I wrote from nyc, with love, and shared round two of some of my favorite links of the year. This week I’m taking a look at a handful of the ideas, stories, tools, habits, and hopes I did and did not change my mind about in 2025.
Writing is such a cool way to take stock and parse through shit—to remember, reflect, realize, and reinvent what we once thought to be true. It’s an open-source tool anyone can take up and run with, in their own voice and form, and I fucking love that.
Shall we?
my brother (who is also the woman in this gif) shared this one w me last week and I was reminded why it’s one of my faves
today’s ad is another one from beehiiv, the platform I use (and like) to send out Babe every week.
k, back to Babe.
Shit I changed my mind about in 2025
AN IDEA
That I need to—and can—do everything by myself (hello, hyper-independence and for sure cue the above gif), including building an app. I realized pretty quickly that this is absolutely not the case. And tbh I felt relief in this realization. Like, I get to ask talented, amazing, kind people if they want to be talented, amazing, and kind with me? Fuck yeah.
In so many areas of life, I know we can’t do it alone (I actually adore collaboration). But for whatever reason—maybe the year-plus (almost two?) of the application-rejection cycle—I convinced myself: yeah, I can build this on my own. I need to build this on my own. To prove something to… whom?
If I unpack the whole shebang, it’s probably tied to a somatically ingrained history of hyper-independence and hyper-vigilance (iykyk). Plus the desire to prove all the decision-makers behind all the form rejection letters I received wrong. All the fancy marketing managers, art directors, and heads of state at the endless tech companies I sent applications, cover letters, and firstborns to.
I wanted to take all that effort—the hours of interviews and take-home assignments and anxiety—and all that rejection and… prove them wrong.
Gif by nba on Giphy
My therapist says that “to prove others wrong” is not a healthy motivator for doing things. She’s right, but also the power of the sentiment can’t be denied. Sure, there were loads of other legitimate reasons why I raced bikes like a motherfucker for over a decade, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say that proving a few people wrong wasn’t part of the narrative.
Ugly or not, it’s true. And it’s certainly part of my current truth. Not the whole of it by any means, but a small (really effective) percentage of it. And not in a bitter way, if that makes sense. But in a super motivating way that zeroes in the focus. Because honestly, telling me I can’t do something is perhaps the best way to ensure I’ll do it, times one hundred.
Ok so back to the “them” I’d currently like to prove wrong. Who are they, exactly? I could name individuals within the machine, but what I really mean is the machine itself: industry, corporate box-checking, and—at the risk of sounding ungrateful—the idea that we (especially women) should be thankful for what we’re given instead of going after what we want.
Yeah. Fuck those ideas.
“…at the risk of sounding ungrateful—the idea that we (especially women) should be thankful for what we’re given instead of going after what we want.
Yeah. Fuck [that].”
A STORY
That I’d have to “buck up” and work for someone else’s company and somebody else’s dream. That it would be the only path to income stability (newsflash it’s not; we’ll talk numbers another time). That a startup would value me and pay me what I’m worth. That betting on a random-ass company, instead of myself, was the most dependable, most adult, smartest path forward.
Fuck that story too.
A TOOL
Vibe-coding tools (all of them?) are great—but for most things, they’re just a start. An entry point. A way in when you don’t yet know the landscape.
Kind of like a good poem: vibe-coding tools give the user/reader a way in, even if that way in feels foreign or unfamiliar.
To this tool, I give many thanks for offering me (and countless other non-coders) a way in. So, I didn’t really change my mind about vibe coding. Instead I realized that they’re just the beginning, and that I can’t wait to fully work with an engineer on this shit.
Fuck yeah to that story.
A HABIT
Self-imposed deadlines—mostly learning which ones to honor and which ones to move. Because adhering just for adherence’s sake creates unnecessary stress and doesn’t necessarily move the project forward. Period.
A HOPE
This one touches on some things I haven’t changed my mind about: the hope that gun violence would end once and for all, the private prison industrial complex would self-implode, and Mr. Orange and his cabinet would all go on a cruise that “got lost” somewhere in the South Pacific (final transmissions citing rampant food poisoning, ofc).
And maybe—radical thought—that wanting a world that doesn’t chew people up isn’t naïve. It’s the minimum.
current status: in palm springs w my husband’s fam (my other fam)
That's issue 49. Joy and cheer to all you nerds this holiday season. Thanks for reading, I’ll see you next week.
xoxo,
lw
PS: Subscribe now if you're into this messy build-in-public energy. Miss the last issue? It’s right here. Also literally none of this is ever advice. I’m sharing what I learn through Babe, and perhaps you’ll learn from my mistakes. Hopefully, maybe, who knows, ily. Also if you’re not already, come hang with Babe on insta, Farcaster, and TBA 🟦.