sigsegv

2005 In Review

It's the last day of the year. Time for me to review the year. Let me start with my failures.
1) I didn't run a half marathon.
2) I didn't run a marathon.
That six years I've talked about it but never done it. Oh well....
3) I still have a large stack of books I need to read.

Next would be my list of successes:
1) I've picked up new programming languages and tools
The ones that come to mind are Haskell, Ruby, Rails and SVK
2) I wrote a 50000 word novel
3) I went on 2 dates

It's funny looking at the list I've made I've not done very much in the last year. That's untrue. I've done lots of things this year but none that are easy to quantify.

Starting with the 500 pound gorilla in the room, I'm not sure where I'm headed with my career. I have about 6 years of experience working in the industry under my belt now. It doesn't seem that long ago that I was just starting out on my career. Somehow I don't see myself doing this for the next 30 - 40 years. Maybe the next decade but not much more than that. I need to start planning my career for that next step. In a way, that process has already started with more junior people coming in and more senior people moving up. A fairly sizable void has been left for me to work in. People's perceptions and expectations of me over the last year have changed. Comments from an old manager these last two weeks have made my role even more clear.

I don't think I'm going to change the way I do things. I've never liked the "firing from the hip, cavalier" attitude we take towards certain things. I can definitely do those things but I like thinking things through with more information. I guess it is going to be the case of being more prepared for things. Changing the way I do things in public but not how I do things in private.

Life would be nothing without friends. I've always be lucky in that department. People always like to say "I have many acquaintances, but very few friends". The opposite is true of me I guess. I've always had many friends but very few acquaintances. Unfortunately I've not done a good job of keeping in touch with old friends something I hope to rectify in the next year.

The question of money has been in my thoughts recently. The issue is not so much money but retirement. Will I be able to retire comfortably? When I started working, I told myself that this was not going to be an issue until I hit this point in my life. Well "this point in my life" is here and I've dived head first into it. They say it's never to late to start but I have my doubts about it. I fear that it may already be too late. But I've always been a natural pessimist so maybe I'm just overreacting to all the material I've been reading.

Another career? I've toyed with the idea of finding another career. I'm not sure if I'm ready to do that yet. What would I do? I actually have a fairly limited skill set. I'm a one trick pony. That worries me.

It looks like 2006 is going to begin the same way 2005 began; I'm a little older but none the wiser.

New Year Resolutions for 2006

They said to be specific......

1) Read six novels in the next year (at least!)
I've always enjoyed reading but in the last couple of years I've struggled to finish books. Writing my novel has made me realize that I've not finished reading a book in a long long time. Most of my ideas came from material I read as a teenager. As a novelist, I think we get ideas from other people's writing. We use those ideas as fuel for our own great ideas. I'm a little low on fuel right now. I'm going to start with novels that people have given me over the last couple of years that I've started but not really finished. I think I have 3 of them on my book shelf right now: The Sparrow, Snow Crash, The Diamond Age.

2) (Re)Watch three movies a month
All I can say is that I'm a great customer for netflix. I pay for their service but rarely watch the DVDs they send me.

3) Run the Portland marathon in October 2006
I need to do this and I need to start way earlier this time. I always have good momentum coming out of Summer. This year I want to be ready for a marathon at the end of September. Portland is ideally positioned for that and it's not too far from where I live. Jan, Feb and Mar are pretty depressing months but it's better I get my low mileage training done in those months and use the nicer spring and summer months for the mid to high mileage training.
3.1) Be doing 6 - 8 mile long runs by March. I'll plan somemore after that.

4) Save $X
Be frugal is what all those books say. I need to be less haphazard about it.

5) Tithe $X
Life has been good to me. Time I start returning the favor.

There are a number of less specific things I want to explore. Economics, Game Theory and Personal Finance are three areas I want to learn more about.

Of course there is the novelling thing. Hopefully I can do and win NaNoEdMo 2006. The novel has potential but it needs a lot of cleaning up. I also want to do NaNoWriMo 2006. They say the sophomore effort is always the hardest.

On top of that I have my career development work. 2006 is going to be more focused. Less breadth but more depth. My main goal is to be a JavaScript wizard. The subgoals are to utilize AJAX techniques and GreaseMonkey. My secondary goal is to become a Ruby wizard. The subgoal is to use Watir more in my work.