Year-end review 2024

2024 is wrapping up, and it’s time for me to post my annual year-end review. This year brought its share of challenges and uncertainties globally. Personally, though, I am grateful for what I was able to experience and accomplish.

2024 Goals

Spoiler alert: three out of five were completed successfully. I swear I’ll review these throughout the year one day. Honestly, I think the biggest barrier to accomplishing the goals I set is actually remembering them. As always, I continue to struggle with writing my blog, but I have a plan for that.

• ❌ Publish three articles to my Dev Community account.

  I thought that setting a much lower goal would help me have a more productive year, but no such luck. I managed to publish once or twice, but never to my Dev Community account.

  This was not for lack of trying. I started multiple articles, but I’ve found that unless I complete them quickly, I lose interest. I hope to change that in 2025, and I’ll detail that a bit more later on in my 2025 goals.

• ✅ Give three presentations.

  Since I lead a bi-weekly tech discussion with my dev team, this goal was probably the easiest to accomplish. This year, I shared talks on continuous integration techniques, QA process improvements, and a deep dive into my current work rearchitecting our front-end application.

• ✅ Read at least 24 books.

  This goal was fairly difficult this year in particular because I started reading the Stormlight Archive series by Brandon Sanderson, and those books are massive. I barely squeaked by but was able to also fit in some great non-fiction books focused on software architecture and process.

• ❌ Take the Primeagen algorithms course on Frontend Masters.

  The time I’ve traditionally used for learning was taken up by a massive project for most of the year (more on that below), so I didn’t get much FEM time in this year. However, I did restart my subscription and managed to knock out a few courses before the end of the year. To be honest, I completely forgot I had set this as a goal last year.

• ✅ Travel to two places I’ve never been before.

  When I made this goal, I already knew my wife and I were heading to Asheville, North Carolina, at the beginning of the year. We stayed at a wonderful inn, toured the Biltmore Estate, explored the Blue Ridge Mountains, and enjoyed the downtown area. It was heartbreaking to see the devastation caused by Helene in September, and our thoughts are with those who were directly affected.

  The second trip was one my wife and I had talked about doing for years. More on that in the year’s highlights.

One thing that continues to roll around in the back of my head is the idea of recording music again. I didn’t make it a goal this year because I knew I wouldn’t have (or make) time for it. I remain hopeful I’ll return to making music but accept that it’s not a priority in my life right now.

Additional highlights

In addition to my personal goals, 2024 presented me with some unique opportunities, as well as things I just want to celebrate.

Starting with the most recent event: My wife recently underwent what we hope will be her last major cancer-related surgery. I know she’s exhausted at this point, but she has met every challenge on this journey head-on. I’m so proud of her and grateful to have her in my life.

Last month, I completed a massive project I began planning in late 2023: I produced and presented an 8-week course on React. The course was a project for work, intended to attract more interest in React development. It was well-received, and I’m excited to share what I learned from the experience.

I continued to work on my personal health as well. I’ve been lifting weights regularly and hit a personal goal of 13% body fat. I’m quite happy with that, especially considering I started the year off with physical therapy due to back and neck pain.

Finally, I mentioned that my wife and I made two trips this year, and the second trip had been years in the making. This year, we finally made our way across the pond to the United Kingdom. We spent a week and a half exploring London, Canterbury, Edinburgh, and Glasgow by train. It was definitely the high point of the year, and we can’t wait to go back.

2025 Goals

For 2025, I want to focus on creating systems around what I want to accomplish, using the principles of Atomic Habits by James Clear. And for fun, I’m using ChatGPT to generate possible strategies for each goal.

• Develop a writing habit. I want to start a daily writing goal, and hopefully it’ll translate to more content here and elsewhere. I’m aiming for ten minutes a day, and I will track progress in a habit tracking app.
• Average three hours a week on Frontend Masters. Now that I’ve renewed my Frontend Masters membership, I have a lot to catch up on. I already have a massive list of courses bookmarked, so I’ll need to be intentional with what I want to learn.
• Read 30 books. This feels a bit ambitious considering I barely read 24 books this year, but I know I can do it. Again, I want to have a good mix of fiction and non-fiction. For non-fiction, I want to focus on personal growth.
• Give at least one presentation in front of a live audience. So far, most of my presentations and talks have been on conference calls. I’d like to get out in front of an audience again. I’ve had an offer from a local meetup, I just need to come up with a topic.
• Revamp my website. It’s been a few years since I launched this version of my blog. It’s actually the furthest I’ve ever gone with building my own website out, and I’ve been very happy with it. However, recently I’ve been feeling the itch to take it even further by adding a few bells and whistles, as well as creating new visuals. This particular goal may be the hardest one I set, considering my track record with personal projects, so completing it would be a huge accomplishment.

See you in the New Year

So that was my 2024: a UK trip, a React course, and my wife one more year cancer-free. It was one of the best years I’ve had in a while. Even though there’s a lot of uncertainty about what’s happening in the world, I’m looking forward to 2025. This year, I aim to focus more on the present, and I hope others find the balance that works for them.

Until next time (hopefully not too long from now)!