2021 In Review
2021 was a big year for me. Here's a look back as the calendar page turns.
With January already over a week in, I wanted to reflect a little bit on here about 2021. It was an eventful year for me, both personally and professional. Here's a rundown of the highlights, and what I have in store for 2022.
Personally
The top highlight for 2021 on a personal level was easily at the end of April, when my wife and I welcomed our second daughter into the world. Nothing could top that, but the next closest big event was our family's move to Wisconsin to get closer to extended family. That was enabled by my switch to a fully remote job (more on that in the career section), giving us some freedom in deciding to move.
It wasn't an easy process; moving 600 miles with two kids and two dogs in the middle of a pandemic is far from straightforward. Add to that the fact that my wife and I both caught COVID in the middle of getting ready to get our house on the market, and it all summed up to a whirlwind of a three-month period.
After a year of making All The Life Changes, I'm looking forward to a few less big events in 2022.
Professionally
After nearly 11 years with Cerner Corporation in four different roles, I made a move to Trinity Life Sciences in 2021. That afforded us the previously-mentioned chance to move to Wisconsin, but it's also been good to get a change of scenery, and work on some different projects and technology. For instance, I got to pick up C# and build out a REST API, and I've also worked with Azure for the first time. I wrote a more detailed look back at my tech career a couple weeks ago; check it out here.
In addition to my job change, 2021 was a big year for me in terms of growing my network and getting involved in the larger tech community. After years of having a mostly-dormant Twitter account that I primarily used for news consumption, I decided to start getting active this year and following people in the tech space. Tech Twitter has been a great community to connect with, and I've met some awesome people. When I first started getting active on Twitter again in spring of 2021, I had a little over 60 followers. I did not imagine crossing 1000 by this point, but it's been fun, and I'm looking forward to making even more great connections in 2022!
I've also been creating more content here on this blog. I wrote a total of 12 posts in 2022, which I'm pretty happy with, especially since I didn't publish my first until May. I definitely gained steam as the year went on, publishing four posts in December. My goal for 2022 is to carry some of that momentum and try to keep pushing out three to four posts a month. We'll see how that goes!
2022 Goals
As mentioned, I have big writing goals for 2022. I have a solid backlog of in-progress drafts and topics I want to write on, both here and in Twitter threads. This year, I've already put out a few threads on software development approaches and trade-offs, as well as some tips on blogging about tech. I'm going to keep on sharing my technical and practical knowledge from my decade-plus in the industry.
I'm also working on making freelancing a bigger focus in 2022. I completed one big freelance web development project in 2021, and that project looks like it might lead to more work this year. I'm working on expanding that business, and I'm also starting into freelance technical writing. I've always enjoyed writing, and I really enjoy taking technical concepts and breaking them down. I've got two paid technical blogs in progress and hope to do even more as the year progresses, so look for those from me soon as well!
On the smart home side, I'm in a bit of a state of flux, as our new house doesn't have a finished basement. We're getting it finished by the spring, but until that's done, a lot of my gear is waiting to be installed. Once that's done, I plan to really ramp up my work and blogging content there as well.
I also have a side-project app idea I've been kicking around for awhile, but it involves some complex data transformation at the initial stage, before I can truly even figure out whether the idea is viable. I just haven't been able to commit the time to it just yet, but I'm hoping I can make some space for it in my 2022 roadmap.
Thanks for Reading!
That's all for now, but thanks for joining me on here over the past year, and I look forward to the year to come!
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