Personal Update: The end of 2010

One of the great things about having a blog is being able to look back at what you decided to do about your life and and measure how far you've come.  I dusted off my previous update,  2010 Things to Get Done to determine if I executed on my action item list.  And with that, here is how I did.


Financial Goals - Total, complete, epic fail.  Well almost.  I didn't stick to my budget, but I did manage to save for a couple of vacations.

Paying Myself First - Going to the gym in the morning before work lasted for about 4 months.  Then I had a week of going to sleep late and that killed the early morning gym fests.  I still go to the gym 5 times a week, but they are at the end of my day instead of the start.

Read One Library Book A Month - Sigh.  Fail again.

Play with Python - Nailed it.  I learned a bunch of Python by playing with the YouTube Rest API and the last.fm API.

Complete 2 Resume Updates - Half credit.  I did one.

Increase StackOverflow Reputation to 1000 - Fail.  I got to 172. I also stopped frequenting SO unless I needed a question answered.

Rails Development - Failed.  I did some Rails hacking this year, but I didn't deploy my app.  I also canceled the domain I bought to deploy the app.

How depressing.  My action item score is:

Completed: 1
Half Credit: 2
Failed: 4

On the surface, it appears that I had a horrible year.  I only completed one thing that I set out to do, made some progress on others, and totally dropped the ball on the rest.  But to prepare for this post, I did a resume update and found that the majority of my time was dedicated to work:

• Worked on a bunch of interesting things like: GWT, Client/Server architectures,  Performance improvements.
• Mentored an intern during the summer.  I learned a lot from him and I hopefully taught him a bunch of stuff.
• Used a bunch of frameworks, technologies and tools like: ActiveMQ, Camel, JMS, Tomcat, Derby, Git, Mercurial

Some things that I've learned and along the way, but aren't resume material are:

• Making a conscious effort to listening to my team's suggestions and recommendations
• Revisiting my software design and ideas the next day to double-check if it was actually a good idea
• Being more open to new ways of accomplishing tasks
• Read world news in the NY Times in addition to reading a lot of personal improvement, finance, and technology blogs.
• I've become an avid yelper at aus.yelp.com

So maybe I didn't do so bad this year.  I may not have accomplished my action items I set at the beginning of the year, but I definitely didn't stagnate.  I feel like I should have done more, but at least I made some progress.

So where do I go from here?

This year I'm going to try something new.  I'm going to create two lists, an "Action item" list and a "Maybe do it this year" list.

Action Items

Learn Django - To continue my software learning, I want to learn some Django.  I've done some Python work so now it's time to move my learning to the web.  I'm thinking of looking for an OSS Python web based project to contribute to.

Improve my online presence - My online image needs to improve.  I need to contribute to online technology forums, work on my linked in profile, and anything else that will increase my visibility.

Personal Finance - My yearly struggle with sticking to budget has made the action item list once again. This time I'm going to try paying with cash for everything except for gas and my monthly bills that are automatically charged.  It's sort of like the Envelope System, but I'm not going to bother with sorting my cash into physical envelopes.

Read More Books - I really love reading.  I just need to get off my butt and use the library more.

Visit Japan - I need to get to the homeland.  In order to go, I'm going to have to save, save, save.

The Maybe List

Take a side job - I really want to try working a part-time job on the side for fun.  Something like working at Starbucks or at a wine store.  I'm not sure it fits into my work schedule, but I have been toying with the idea.

Andddd go!