2015 Retrospective

Writing:

Writing this year was a terribly mixed bag. I finished a novel, but you're not likely to ever read it. It's 100,257 words and I keep it in my Nook and re-read it because I'm actually proud of it, but unless you have very particular tastes, it's not going to appeal to you at all.

Other than that, I didn't do much. It was a lot of fun, and the fanbase that did coalesce around it was very worthwhile, but these days I'm having trouble getting excited about my older work, and don't really have the gumption to push forward. I'm especially worried about become

a certain kind of writer as I get older.

Programming:

This was a terrible year for me. Professionally, I worked at the same job and actually shipped a couple of projects, but I wouldn't call them "interesting." My skillset continues to be stuck in 2012, the year they hired me, with jQuery and Backbone being the two technologies I still work with on a regular basis.

The world is passing me by. Clojurescript and React are new hotnesses, along with Purescript and Elm, and I really should learn them, but the time needed to do so is desperately hard to come by.

I did read a lot of papers. But that's not the same thing as practically developing code.

Family:

This was pretty much the best part of 2015. I got the backyard shed done, Omaha, RaenSpirit and I went to many plays, ballets, and symphonies, we had a lot of fun. We rode our bicycles to the train station, which took us to Portland, and rode around Portland, visiting book stores, shopping malls, and by sheer accident meeting the mayor.

Storm graduated, and went off to college, and pretty much disappeared from our lives. That was mostly her choice, and I'm saddened by it, but I did the best I can to get her to adulthood, and let's see where she takes things from here.

Overall, 2015 was a year of some stasis. We all got older, kids grew up. I met some new friends and re-met up with some old ones. But I didn't make anything big this year, and that's a little disappointing.