Intended audience

Like my 2023 Retrospective, this post is mostly intended for future me, but it’s possible you’ll find it cathartic to review the same categories in your own life.

Summary ∑

🎢 These years continue to be rollercoasters.

  • ⚖️ I lost more weight, and I made my dentist happy by flossing every day
  • 😔 We lost our Aunt unexpectedly, and a member of my family had (and survived) breast cancer
  • 🏰 We celebrated our 2 year anniversary and visited a castle for my wife’s birthday
  • 💦 We had some water damage and dishwasher issues
  • 📚 I read 90 books, and played over 40 video games
  • 👋 A lot of people (including me) left our company for the greener side of the fence
  • 🥃 We did the bourbon trail in Kentucky, and went 🏎️ go-carting with my parents

Let’s break it down by category.

Books Read 📚

I read 90 books this year. My favorites were:

Notable mentions

Games Played 🎮

I played somewhere over 40 games: across PC/Steam Deck, Meta Quest, PS5, Android, and Nintendo Switch. My favorites were:

Health ❤️

  • I continued my weight loss from 2023, losing about 12lbs more this year. I’m now at my targetted goal of roughly where I was in college 🏆.
  • I flossed for 365 days straight, probably the first time ever 🦷.

Blogs posted 📝

  • 6 posts this year, though I was hoping to write at least one per month.

Movies 🎦

This isn’t an exhaustive list of what we watched, but these were the ones I remember and are worth re-watching.

TV Series 📺

Improv and anime seem to be where I gravitated in 2024.

Home issues 🏠

  • Water Damage caused by a filter cap that wasn’t tightened all the way. We added some water sensors around specific areas of the house to catch this sooner.
  • Dishwasher problems. The control panel was working on and off for awhile and we just decided to get a new dishwasher (Bosch 800 series) to stop worrying about it. This one had its own issues and we got an in-warranty repair within 9 months of owning it.
  • Air conditioner issues in the summer
  • Car maintenance needed at the end of the year

Struggles 🥺

  • My Aunt died unexpectedly
  • A member of our family had and survived breast cancer

We miss you, Aunt Ann Aunt Ann

Family and Friends 🫶

  • We paid off my wife’s student loans 🏆
  • We visited Bishop’s Castle 🏰 on my wife’s birthday
  • My father-in-law and sister-in-law visited
  • My parents visited, and we went go-karting and to miniature golf
  • We went to Kentucky with my Brother’s family, and enjoyed the Bourbon Trail
    • favorite bourbon: Woodford Reserve Double Oak, Angel’s Envy Triple Oak
    • favorite distilleries: Rabbit Hole, Wild Turkey, Buffalo Trace
    • favorite gift shop: Four Roses
    • honorable mention: That espresso I had at Michter’s (the bourbon was good too)

Castle Wild Turkey

Work 💼

  • A lot of people departed from the company
  • I left after 6 1/2 years, and I started a new job in December

Education 👨‍🎓

  • I started a M.S. in Computer Science, completing 1/5 of the program.
  • I earned a couple new certifications

Open Source 🐙

I contributed a lot to my own Github with small projects and lab.

  1. Social media management tool: https://github.com/hortonew/multique
  2. Monitoring lab: https://github.com/hortonew/monitoring-lab
  3. Read it Later app: https://github.com/hortonew/read_it_later
  4. Kubernetes monitoring lab: https://github.com/hortonew/monitoring-lab-k8s
  5. Kubernetes gitops lab: https://github.com/hortonew/k8s-gitops-lab
  6. Game of Life in Rust/Bevy: https://github.com/hortonew/game_of_life_bevy

Podcasts to recommend 🔊

Apparently I listened to an entire month’s worth of podcasts. I’m not sure how I feel about that 🤔.

I picked up a few new podcasts this year, but my favorite new one was: Developer Voices

Podcast Statistics

Apps to recommend 💻

  • I’m still all-in on Raycast and Obsidian
  • Terminal Apps: jid, fzf, bat and fun aliases like:
alias fzfc='fzf --preview "bat --color=always {}"'

New tech 💾

  • Stream Deck - I got this for Christmas, now I’m setting up all the quick access Home Assistant functions

Processes that helped 📊

  • I’m still using Todoist to manage things I need to get done
  • I used Daylio exclusively to track my goals and keep me on target

2023 Goal Review

  • ️⚠️️ Be more deliberate in what I do: “Eat the frog” first
  • ⚠️ Deep learning and enjoyment instead of a large quantity of surface-level things
  • ❌ More small business activities with my wife and friends (game/trivia nights, etc.)
  • ✅ Give back more: blog posts, open source, etc.
  • ✅ Consume less: reduce physical and mental waste
  • ✅ Pay off at least half of the remaining balance on my wife’s student loans
  • ✅ Games I’d like to get to in 2024
  • ✅ Do a similar recap at the end of it

2025 Outlook 🔭

  • Get to a beach, maybe via a cruise
  • Create more self contained projects (1 per month), and at least 4 should be viable SaaS products (1 per quarter)
  • Blog more about things I learn in the moment, without the expectation for anything longer than a couple paragraphs
  • Keep taking notes on what you read, but go back and summarize into digestable statements or themes
  • Games I’d like to get to in 2025