My Annual Review 2024

Here’s my annual review covering 2024.

Work

Big news: the software portal I’d been building for over a year launched! It was a ton of work: ups, downs, and updating caniuse-lite. We defied escape velocity and launched. I was proud of my team and my growth in achieving this milestone.

Soon afterward, I got a new job and got promoted! I’m enjoying the challenge. I’ve learned that I’m happiest when being pushed and working on tough problems. I’m grateful for James Stanier’s book Become an Effective Software Engineering Manager, which I bookmarked liberally.

Lastly, I rebuilt my development environment from scratch, something I do every couple of years. Here’s the code for the new one. When you maintain a custom environment, things tend to get over-engineered, and I find it helpful to reset. I take everything away and ask– what do I need to work? Every time I do this, I find a library I didn’t know much about that’s crucial to my work (vim-impaired this time), and others that aren’t anymore and can be removed.

Personal

I haven’t shared much personal news on this blog, and I’m working to change that.

I continue to find joy in my quiet life in Maine. I stayed active by running and hiking. I worked on my relationships with dinners and date nights. I kept my mind engaged by reading 34 books, writing, and working. I looked after my spirit with meditation and retreats. We said goodbye to our beloved cat and adopted two new ones. I went swimming a lot.

My personal/professional mastermind keeps getting better, too. I have a small group chat with former colleagues that I’ve been a part of for years, which we use to share growth, ask hard questions, and swap pair-programming sessions. It’s one of my favorite things.

Side Projects

My 2023 goal was to write a technical book. I wrote about 30K words about automated testing, and then, I lost confidence in what I was doing. I’m disappointed that I didn’t finish, but I learned a lot and I haven’t given up.

My Meetup, Maine JS, grew a lot this year: we started with 143 members and grew to 265! Along the way, we hosted ten events in Portland, Maine, including lightning talks, socials, and tech talks from two of my favorite programmers, Adam Young and Gleb Bahmutov. We recruited a new co-organizer. I feel great about our direction.

This year I put more energy into my newsletter, relaunching it, rebranding it, and re-committing to a weekly cadence. I shipped 17 letters, with a year-end summary here. Writing weekly is demanding, but I get a lot out of it! If you like my writing and want to read more, subscribe now.

A big revelation for me is that all my side projects– blogging, newsletter writing, organizing Meetups, mentoring– matter, despite not always getting immediate feedback. People don’t give a lot of feedback, and sometimes it’s delayed. That doesn’t mean you aren’t making a difference.

Wrapping Up

What a year! I feel so grateful for all that I have. As I enter 2025, my four guidelines are to: prioritize presence, welcome change, choose health, make more art, and avoid off-by-one-errors. I hope you are well.

• Retros