2025 went by fast. Or slow. Depending on how you look at it.

It was challenging, yet deeply rewarding. Quiet, yet relentlessly busy. Overwhelming, yet at moments profoundly blissful. It was a year of contradictions, of learning how to stay with discomfort, and of discovering what it really means to commit to a practice when the conditions are far from ideal.

Looking back now, I realise that 2025 was less about visible outcomes and more about internal shifts. A year of becoming.

Arriving Without a Map

Academically, 2025 marked an important year for me. My goal was clear: to complete my Master’s project, which had already been unfolding over two years. But life, of course, does not happen in neat academic timelines.

Arriving in Vienna from another continent came with challenges I could not fully anticipate. I arrived without a network, without collaborators, without a place I could call my creative home. No familiar faces, no shared references, no ready-made community. For a performance artist whose work is deeply rooted in collective creation, this was at times profoundly disorienting.

There is a particular loneliness that comes with entering a European city as an outsider, especially within the arts. Scenes are often tight-knit, histories long, relationships layered. Finding your way in takes time, patience, and resilience. It means attending events where you know no one, introducing yourself over and over again, learning how things work without being told explicitly. It means accepting invisibility before recognition.

At times, it felt like being a lone fish in a deep blue sea.

Survival as Practice

And of course, no connections often means no work. No work means no income.

2025 became my first full year working as a barista in a local restaurant to pay my bills. On paper, it sounds like the cliché of the struggling artist. In reality, it became one of my greatest teachers.

This year taught me that sometimes loving your art means stepping outside your comfort zone. That patience is not passive, but active and demanding. That commitment and perseverance are not romantic ideals, but daily choices that keep you going when things feel uncertain.

Between early mornings and late-night shifts, trying (and often failing) to perfect my German, maintaining my commitment to art-making, and showing up to workshops, lectures, and events, I slowly began to chip away at Vienna’s rock-hard artistic landscape. One conversation at a time. One workshop at a time. One small connection after another.

Quietly, things began to shift.

Completion, Almost Unnoticed

Somewhere in between exhaustion and persistence, something almost miraculous happened: I completed my Master’s degree. Just before the year could take its last breath.

There was no grand celebration. No dramatic finish. Just a quiet sense of arrival. A recognition that something long and complex had come to a close, even if it did not look the way I once imagined it would.

What I Carry Into 2026

2025 was a quiet practice year. Not much, yet so much. A year of learning who I am when things are uncertain, when progress is slow, when recognition is delayed.

As I step into 2026, these are the things I carry with me:

Presence in life: Hardships pass. Unwanted jobs and difficult situations are temporary. Gratitude matters, even for work that simply allows me to sustain myself and my art.

Presence in the arts: To show up fully. To use every opportunity for workshops, lectures, co-creations, and facilitation as a chance to listen, learn, and connect. To expand my network patiently, one step at a time.

Courage to initiate: Towards my own exhibition and performance project that I plan to curate in 2026.

Academic continuity: To remain active, engaged, and to take concrete steps towards a PhD.

Care for myself: To not let stress, ambition, or external expectations override my health. To remember that family, friends, hobbies, rest, and socialising are not distractions from the work, but part of what sustains it.

2025 reminded me that growth does not always look productive from the outside. Sometimes it is slow, invisible, and deeply internal. And sometimes, we need exactly that kind of year in order to take new steps forward.