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!