Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger

More than Ever Hour After Hour Work Is Never Over

As yet another calendar year marches to a close, I'm reflecting back on the year and how well I'm doing in various areas of my life.

In the area that I can take the least credit for, but am most proud of, at just a bit over two years old my son is healthy, happy and continues to surprise me as he develops. While my wife does a vast majority of work raising him, I'm very happy with the fact that I make it a priority to make it home from work before bedtime almost every night, and that so far my son seems to genuinely enjoy spending time with me.

I've made a lot of progress professionally this year. I presented at a conference, kicked off a project from scratch, shipped several open source libraries, and wrote a lot of Swift. While I keep getting better, especially by having a lot of smart people to learn from and work with, I also know enough to know that there's always going to be room to grow as a developer, even in a fairly well constrained space of iOS application development.

On a personal front, I haven't been quite as awesome this year. I've made some strides towards managing my stress levels, but even adding some basic mindfulness practice into the mix I feel like I've been holding steady rather than reducing my stress levels. I also have a mixed bag on the relationships front, in particular the number of people I'm in touch with has dropped off dramatically, and I'm not quite sure how I feel about that.

Overall, I'm happy with what I accomplished this year. I probably could have done more, but not significantly more without having to start making sacrifices to the balance of the various parts of my life, and long terms I don't think I'd be happy if I did that. The action items to look at for next year are further stress remediation efforts, as that's one of my largest blockers, and considering if I want to make a effort on the social front.