Annual review

This annual review is inspired by many others I’ve seen floating around in the past few days. It’s a personal analysis of:

1. What went well this year?
2. What didn’t go so well this year?
3. What am I working toward?

What went well this year

Married life. In April, Leita and I had an amazing wedding at Arcosanti, and a wonderful honeymoon in Bali. Not much can top that, except possibly…

Baby Otto on his way. In just a few weeks, we’ll meet our boy Otto, named after my grandfather. Getting ready for his arrival has been so much fun. I’m very excited to get to know him. I’ve had some practice in being a father because of our amazing…

Daughters. Maria and Greta were part of the package in marrying Leita, and while we’ve had a strong bond, this year the girls and I have become even more comfortable with each other. They’re amazing, even if they try to distract me from my…

Work. SitePen had a strong year, and our amazing team accomplished so much! From releasing Intern and regularly updating dgrid, to delivering developer, support and training services for our wonderful customers, and for many fun things we’ve been working on that we have not released yet. A busy year also meant a lot of…

Travel. Probably too much, but in addition to Bali, we took family trips to San Diego and Santa Monica. Work took me to:

• London, England (twice)
• Mumbai and Pune, India
• Ottawa, Toronto, and London, Canada
• Bangkok, Thailand
• Seoul, South Korea
• San Jose, San Francisco, Palm Springs, Redlands, Scottsdale, and Pittsburgh, USA

This was thankfully fewer trips than in past years, and was made easier by Global Entry and TSA PreCheck. I also managed to avoid

Conferences. I made it a goal this year to only attend conferences and meetup groups that were either local, or were taking place while I was already away for a business trip. This gave me more time to

Code. The past few years were rather busy, and this year I was able to shake some rust off of my development skills, and learn many new tricks and technologies, and make some decent contributions to Dojo.

Meditation. I’ve been doing a daily meditation since 2012, and I really enjoy those few moments a day.

What Didn’t Go So Well?

Dojo. While the project is successful, we did not make as much progress on Dojo 2.0 as I would have hoped we would make this year.

Fitness. After an amazing few years of fitness, I spent most of this year recovering from shoulder surgery late in 2012. It’s been a slow recovery, and I’m not as fit as I would like.

Organize. I’m more than a year behind on organizing my travel photos, for example.

What am I working toward?

Fatherhood. Being the best father I can be, and enjoying it from day 1.

Husband. Continuing to be the best husband I can be to Leita, always.

Dojo. Get 2.0 shipped, and make many improvements.

Fitness. Work back to where I was two years ago with regards to fitness and yoga.

Clarity. Continue to improve my clarity in thought and communication, and continue my meditation efforts.

Travel. Travel less, but make sure the travel that is done is high quality and enjoyable. And get those travel photos in order!

Work. Continue to grow SitePen and make progress on all of the things, with our amazing team.