Year-end review 2022

What. Just. Happened?

And I thought 2021 was crazy.

2022 was a roller coaster of emotion for many people. We saw historical weather events, political events, everything. I would like to, for once, have a year that is not historic.

My year was wild, filled with terrific ups and terrifying downs. What follows is a quick overview of my 2022.

2022 opportunities reviewed

• Publish 42 articles in 2022. For someone with a track record of not blogging regularly, 42 articles was a lofty goal. One of the things I was counting on was publishing an article every day in the month of February. That didn’t happen, though, mainly because my responsibilities at work increased. It’s tough to write an entire article after a nine-hour workday, and I didn’t really account for that.
• Finish up all current issues in my projects list. I still have nine issues to tackle, but I managed to integrate Notion into my blog workflow, which was probably the biggest issue in my backlog.
• Build 3 projects from my project backlog. My project backlog remains untouched, but I think I’ve more than made up for it with my list of projects at work.
• Work out at least twice a week, and go on at least one 40-minute walk a week. One of our Christmas presents to ourselves was a treadmill. Since assembling it (which was quite a workout all its own), I walk at least 40 minutes a day, and I love it.
• Move to a new state. Sadly, this one did not happen and won’t for a while. More on that later.

Other 2022 accomplishments

• First, I guess the biggest news is I was promoted to project tech lead! I plan on writing more about this in the near future, but my new responsibilities include guiding the technological direction of our project and representing our project’s code to the rest of the company.
• A major phase of the project I work on, which had been in development for over a year and a half, finally went live this year. This was as exciting as it was scary. We have identified a few issues, but overall the launch went smoothly.
• 2022 was the year I returned to reading fiction. I blew through The Dark Tower series (Stephen King) and have started the Book of Swords (Fred Saberhagen) epic. It’s been a breath of fresh air since most of what I read is tech-focused nonfiction.
• I also picked up art again. I’ve been playing around with Procreate on my iPad Pro. I love the Apple Pencil, and Procreate is a fantastic medium for anything from casual sketching to painting digital works of art.
• I can barely believe it, but this year I celebrated 20 years with my wonderful wife. We married just out of college and dated for seven years prior. She has been my best friend through the best and worst times of my life, and I would not be where I am without her. I am looking forward to another 20!

2022 challenges

• Twitter has been the only social media platform I’ve participated in for years, and recent events have me questioning whether or not I should continue. For the time being, I’ve adopted a wait-and-see approach. But, you never know, you might see me on TikTok in 2023.
• For almost the past decade, my only hobby has been programming. After my recent promotion, though, I began longing for old hobbies. I mentioned earlier that I returned to reading fiction and began creating digital art.** I’ve also wanted to return to writing and performing music, but my schedule has made that difficult.**
• Probably the ultimate challenge I faced in 2022 was one of the scariest things I’ve ever experienced. In September, my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer. Thankfully the cancer was discovered early on, but it changed the course of our lives for the next few years as my wife goes through treatment.
• Because of the nature of my wife’s treatment, we’ve been forced to postpone our plans to move. This was a huge disappointment to both of us, but I care much more for my wife’s health than a change of scenery.

2023 goals

• I would love to mess around with music more this year. I’m toying with the idea of taking a music vacation where I work on writing for a whole week. Regardless, I need to make time for the things I want to do.
• More reading for pleasure. I want to complete the Book of Swords epic this year (which, from what I understand, is HUGE). I would love to make my bookshelf public as well.
• Related to the last goal, I want to revisit some of my favorite books on software engineering and talk about what I love about them in more detail. Sort of like a series of book reports.
• I want to continue my workout streak and get back to lifting two or three times a week.
• One huge work goal is to rearchitect our front-end project. We need to scale up outside contributions as well as speed up feature development, so we’re betting big on splitting up our project into specific solutions.
• I also want to replace our project’s form system, which probably accounts for 85% of the project. Our current system was not built to handle the complex forms we have been building as of late, and it’s negatively affecting our velocity. I’ve already started this work and I’d love to see it finished in the first half of 2023.
• I didn’t get to do any conference talks in 2022, but I’m already planning a talk around component architecture. At the very least, this work will end up as a series of articles here, so be on the lookout for that.

Till next year

Well, I’m done for 2022. It’s been real, and it’s been fun, but I’m ready for a boring year. Seriously.

What are you excited about in 2023? Let me know on Twitter (assuming it continues to work), and I’ll see you again next year!