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January 2, 2023

2022 - A Year in Review

2022 has been a year of growth, enrichment, and dedication to my craft. It was one of those years where it’s hard to remember where the year went, but on reflection, quite a lot happened!

Overall, the year was one of growing my knowledge and growing my roots – reading, exploring, and finding confidence in new routines. It ended spectacularly, yet quietly: by a burning fire, underneath a starlit canopy, as we camped beneath a cool Texas sky.

Things that Happened

  • I contributed to larger and more important projects as a software engineer at Litmus, from Rails upgrades to Chrome Extensions. And I got to meet my colleagues in person!
  • I attended my first Ruby conference, RubyConf Mini, in Providence! I’ll definitely be headed to more tech conferences this year.
  • This newsletter launched! Consistently publishing updates on a medium that feels right is a big deal.
  • We adopted Tuki, our cat. 🐈‍⬛
  • I started rock climbing in earnest this year, and have enjoyed the progress I’m making.

Travels

This year’s travels were considerably more domestic than I would have liked, but this list surprised me, I thought there would be less!

  • Tulum, MX
  • Denver, CO
  • Houston, TX
  • Dallas, TX
  • Boston, MA
  • Holderness, NH
  • New York, NY
  • Chicago, IL
  • Providence, RI

My Favorite Books of 2022

Of the 27 I finished this year, in no particular order:

  • The Pragmatic Programmer
  • Recursion
  • The Shadow of the Wind
  • Frankenstein
  • Building a Second Brain
  • The Alchemist (re-read)
  • The Psychology of Money
  • Sacred Economics
  • Letting Go

Favorite Technologies of 2022

  • Ruby (my daily driver)
  • Rails
  • Obsidian
  • VS Code
  • TypeScript / JavaScript
  • Browser Extensions
  • Docker
  • Deno
  • RSS

Looking Ahead to 2023

While I have my internal 2023 goalsetting process, here’s what’s coming up.

  • Get married!
  • Continue my path of growth at Litmus and start taking on bigger and bigger projects at work.
  • Aim to write beyond my personal updates (I’m fond of the cadence I’ve adopted for this newsletter), publishing thoughts, however half-baked – on technology, economics, and presence.
  • Keep hacking away at my string of side projects and playing with new web technologies, regardless of their commercial viability.
  • Travel more in ‘23, with a trip already planned for Taiwan.
  • Find more awesome people in Austin.
  • Feel presence in every moment, and enjoy the ride!

Do you have an annual year in review? If you do, and you’d like to share, I’d love to read it!

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