Rhys Wynne

If you’ve been on Instagram recently¹ (probably the only major social media platform I tolerate), you’d have seen the “Me in 2016” trend doing the rounds. Though trying to find a page somewhat relevant to link to is tough mind (there was a “Me at the start of 2016 vs me at the end of 2016” meme trend from 10 years ago that was popular after the world went to shit), but if you’re not aware, people are sharing photos of themselves from 10 years ago. Yes. Ten. No I can’t believe it either.

Wanting to jump a bit on the bandwagon, and based on a comment I replied to on the Under Consoletation Podcast Discord group, I thought I’d turn it into a blog post, as rather surprisingly to me I was pretty active blogging here. Granted, a lot of it is cringey unboxing videos as I think I was trying to start a YouTube channel for reasons only known to myself, but I thought I’d share some highlights.

Brexit and Trump aside², 2016 was a good year. I did a fair bit of travelling and actually was settled with everything before the world went to shit. I wasn’t sure if I was going to go freelance (that was a couple of years later), but instead I was focusing on actually enjoying myself, and enjoy myself I did. My highlights were:-

Euro 2016

Euro 2016 was the first time I saw Wales (now with 2 Euros, a women’s Euros and World Cup under their belt) qualify for a major tournament. I cannot begin to talk about how much that tournament meant to me: I’ve 5 photos of Hal Robson Kanu’s goal against Belgium in my house. For context, I’ve 4 of my family.

But mainly, whilst the UK was going to shit with the run up to the Brexit referendum, in France, the Welsh were having a great time. So many fond memories of the 2 weeks I spent in France, the nights in Bordeaux with about 3 groups of friends from high school, university and Wales away, the bar in a spa hotel in Kortrijk, Belgium I was staying at and the memories that included (which was largely me, a German couple and a Spanish barman talking about life. But there was a funny moment where a Welsh couple stayed a night and didn’t realise that Wales were in the Euros, they had driven to buy a caravan). Exploring Toulouse, drinking in the main square, and seeing friends from all walks of life. Just an incredible two weeks for me.

Honestly, I’d wager that it (along with the Euros in Germany a couple of years back) were the last great international footballing tournaments, and even now the World Cup doesn’t interest me, even if we qualify, given the state of the world.

I wrote about it a couple of times on the blog 10 years ago, “We’ll Always Have Bordeaux” and “Je ne veau pas aller travailler“. The first was written after I came home, the latter was after we were eliminated.

Wrestlemania 32

The other highlight of 2016 for me was probably the worst Wrestlemania in years, certainly the worst between 30 and 40. Whilst the actual event was terrible, the memories from the trip to Dallas and New Orleans will stay forever. This is arguably a more impactful trip for me, as I’ve got a couple of really good friends from it that I still speak to most days – one of which has moved to London. So, whilst Wrestlemania was bad, the trip? Life changing. I remember the food, the golf day, the day after Wrestlemania which involved a lot of drinks in the sun (made the flight home terrible) and some other stories I only feel comfortable sharing in person. Just a fantastic time really. Hopefully America sorts itself out so I can visit again.

I wrote about it with “That Shit Cray(fish)” and “Dallas Flyers Club“.

Polish Family

Finally, the third biggest impact (and another happy memory)³ was the wedding of my brother to my sister-in-law. It was my first visit to Krakow, and the wedding was excellent. I also got to meet my sister-in-law’s family for the first time, who are wonderful people. Plus I fell in love with the city of Krakow as well. I’m probably going there twice this year – once for WordCamp Europe, once as there’s been talk of a 10 year celebration.

I talked about the travelling bit of Krakow on a blog post here “Only here for the Krakow“.

The rest of the blogs were seemingly dedicated to a Dryathlon I did in 2016 – which is funny reading considering how much I hated non alcoholic beers back then. They’re pretty much my go to now. Funny.

Anyway, how was your 2016?

1. I said “recently” when I mean “since the start of the year”. This post has been sat in drafts for a while needing images. Soz. ↩︎
2. Which is like Mrs Lincoln saying “That aside, I really enjoyed the play”. ↩︎
3. I jokingly put it third. It’s the biggest. ↩︎

Ah yes, my regularly yearly goals post.

So last year I made a bunch of goals for 2025 – things I wanted to do in the year to try and grow me, my business and my health. I also introduced the bingo card feature, where I’d chalk of lines, corners or a full house should I achieve them.

That really helped as I achieved quite a lot in 2025. Here’s where I am:-

Get back into public speaking – Success 🎉: I spoke twice in 2025 – once as WPLDN, once at an evening MWUG meetup. It was good to finally get out there and share my knowledge on running a business, and I really enjoyed it.

The talk I gave was a realisation after Loopconf where I shared breakfast with a few folks, and I talked somebody’s ear off on how I run a business. I’m pretty much an open book (even talking about money, folks – you should talk about money¹), and this was my talk.

Overall, it was pretty well received. I really enjoyed it and it was good to get good insights from folks on how they run their businesses. I’ve taken at least one point on board for my business.

Finally rebuild Winwar Media to my liking – Success 🎉: The bingo card helped here as I was pushed to achieve this towards the end of 2025. In the end, the new site went live on 29th December 2025. Is it finished? No. Is it better than it was? Yes. Can I build and iterate things on top of it? Indeed I can.

Similarly, I did the same with this here site, being inspired by Loopconf to start blogging again. Now I can work on things and have a clear roadmap for this site, using a a Trello board to map things out, add features and making the site a bit of joy to navigate. That’s the hope, anyway.

Sing about my Work More – Success 🎉: Yes! I now think I can tick this off as a success as I’ve built up a case studies section on Dwi’n Rhys. I also turn the testimonials into Instagram content, which helps engagement and churning out social posts. Yay! Not quite AI slop!

Run a sub 30 minute 5k – Failure: I didn’t achieve this. I’m about 2 and a half minutes off this at the moment. I’ve had a couple of 1km’s under the 6 minute mark. I’m not going to focus on times, though, instead focusing on quantity this year (more in the personal goals for 2026).

It’s odd, I think my mind gets bored with some runs, and ones I can focus on, which are a bit hilly for example, I do better than ones that are quite boring. I thought I’d get a few fast times over the Christmas break, but turns out straight in and out runs are harder than more undulating park runs. As a beach child, I hate to say it but the sea gets boring.

Hit a weight loss goal – Failure: I haven’t weighed myself for an age, but I know I’m off this. A lot of bad habits have creeped back, as although I feel healthier than this time last year, I am still a little heavier than I like. I’ll look to improve this this year.

Update: I weighed myself this morning, and it confirmed my suspicion. I put on a bit of weight! I’m still way down, but yeah, up a bit.

Attend a Game Dev Meetup – Success 🎉: This was an achievement as I attended the Manchester Indie Game Dev Meetup in July. I’ve since not been back (not that there is anything wrong! Just the dates haven’t aligned). I look forward to attending next year.

Oddly, I also achieved a goal from 2024 – with me scoring 23 in a game of cricket. Funnily enough it was the first game in 2025 I achieved this, with a score of 24. My highest is now 31 (retired).

After talking about the bingo card last year, I’ve filled it in and with additional of two of my 50 before I’m 50 list (I ate in a Michelin Starred Restaurant and I went to The Cave), this was the state of play.

I hit two lines! As such, I treated myself to two of my “line” prizes, which was a pair of brand new pair of cricket trainers and a Strava subscription.

Onto this year, here are my goals for 2026.

Professional Goals

Weirdly, my goals for 2026, I struggled with thinking of professional goals for me this year. I even turned to everybody’s favourite ocean burning hallucinogenic tool – ChatGPT – to try and come up with ideas and it came up a bit short. Nevertheless, here’s what I’ve settled on.

Release another Paid Plugin or SAAS

It’s been a fair few years since I’ve released a paid WordPress plugin or SAAS, and now that I write this with a relatively long term runway, I can maybe focus on some more non web development projects. I was fortunate enough late last year to work on a paid plugin which gave me great insight into how I can build and market one.

So the hope is for 2026 I’ll release a paid plugin or a SAAS. I’ve got two ideas I can maybe look to explore, one paid plugin is pretty much half way there for a first draft, so I can’t imagine it being too much work to push it out. I’ve got a cheeky idea for a blog post to prepare for it, too.

Grow my WordPress newsletter to 50 subscribers

I’m not entirely sure how I’m going to do this, but one thing I’ve seen on a number of my sites has been traffic has dropped from search engines over all my sites. I’m not seeing a drop in rankings, so I suspect it’s due to AI. Joy.

Nevertheless, I’m looking to grow communities around my sites. One such thing is my monthly WordPress newsletter. It gets a decent number of subscribers and open rates, but it is still stubbornly quite small, with only 22 (at the time of writing) I pushed it out a little bit and I’m now up to 28.

I will say, the quality of subscribers is quite something. Names I trust and enjoy listening to in the WordPress space. I must be doing something right. It’d be good to get it up to 50 subscribers by the end of the year. I’m not entirely sure how, so if you want a monthly dose of WordPress, the web and some other fun things, please, do subscribe. Thanks!

Finally get WP Email Capture updated to my liking

I’m fucking sick of Peadig and it breaking, so now that Winwar Media’s site is done, I want to get WP Email Capture off Peadig and onto my standard Kadence setup. I’m imaging as I don’t particularly want to change the design too much or it’s functionality it’ll be a lot quicker. We will see.

Be weird to actually thinking of three different professional tasks to do for the first time!

Personal Goals

First off, I want to go ahead and do something I swore this time last year I’d never do, and run a 10k. I ran a couple of properly timed 5k runs with medals and stuff, and I think most runners are secretly magpies and like collecting shiny things. I’ve ran a 7k once (around the lake near where my partner lived in Romania), so I’d be keen to try and get to double figures.

Similarly for double figures, I’d be keen to get to 50 parkruns this year. I’m currently on 28². I’m 50/50 on whether I achieve this, but it’s one parkrun every 2 weeks. As long as I maintain that, I think I’ll achieve it.

Finally I really want to release a video game on non-Pico 8 hardware. What that will be I’m not sure, but I really want to either focus on retro technology, or something like Godot for maybe pushing onto Steam? We’ll see. I have looked at potentially game jams like DOSEmber as there are DOS based languages on Lua. I have one game on the go that could tick this off, but it may be technically cheating myself. But it’ll tick off the square.

So, on to this year, here’s my bingo card for this year, adding on 3 potential “50 before I’m 50” items.

Overall, I’ve gotten very lucky. The middle square is quite a nice one as I’ve already got a 50 before I’m 50 booked in, and a second one I’m relatively sure of hitting, however I hope that doesn’t make me lazy, especially as two of them require me to be fit.

Nevertheless, those are my goals for 2026. What about yours? Leave them in the comments, and are you doing a bingo card this year? Let me know if so!

1. My rationale to this is that it’s like politics – the people who shut down talk about it have the most to lose. By being an open book I feel I can help people grow, but that’s by the by… ↩︎
2. It’s kind of funny that both the amount of subscribers and parkruns are both on 28 ↩︎