This seems to be a tradition now, reflecting on the year in a “last post of…”. I’ve done it for two years now, in 2018, and 2019.
This year has obviously gone differently than anyone could have planned. Most of my (loosely defined) goals last year were related to work, and when everything changed those got put on hold. Also in March, my little dev squad merged with another small team, combining everyone who works on community & contributor tools into one team. Between the team change & coronavirus, it felt like it took months to really catch my footing, but I’ve ended the year feeling pretty successful— if not in the ways I expected a year ago.
I didn’t expect to get commit to WordPress, for one thing.
Contributing to Twenty Twenty-One was fun, so was working with the #core-css group. I’m hoping to jump in there even more next year, now that I’m a bit more comfortable with commit.
I managed to post a few blog posts, and I’d like to keep up with that. Trying to do a series hasn’t worked out, but I tinker with enough random code regularly to post little write-ups.
I did no travel aside from a last-minute trip to San Diego in February (the “our trip to Thailand is cancelled, but we need to get out of Boston winter before things get bad” trip). Over the summer, we decided not to spend another winter in our Cambridge apartment. We had been talking about moving to Philadelphia for a while – we know people here, we could have a house with outdoor space while still being in a “city”, and it’s closer to other friends and family along the east coast. We took one trip down to see places, but mostly did the whole “buying a house” thing remotely (with some help from local friends 💙). We moved in on Halloween weekend.
Philly still isn’t really home yet, though we’ve been here for 2 months – we’ve settled in, the house is great, our little block is cute, but the park nearby is under construction, and it’s hard to get a feel for the neighborhood when no one wants to meet new people.
I picked up a few quarantine hobbies (and got a little more serious about others) – we got a bit of sourdough starter, so I’ve made biscuits, flatbread, focaccia, rolls, and of course, bread. I bought Pastry Love before leaving Boston, and made a bunch of high-maintenance cookies that I shipped off to my family for Christmas (the lemon polenta shortbreads are great, but be prepared to zest lemons forever).
My garden was my outlet for “I need something to do” over the summer. We built a second raised bed, and repurposed the wooden planters that had been decorations at the wedding 😁
The new hobby was 3D modeling and learning Blender. I went through a bunch of youtube tutorials (from blender guru), and got pretty confident in it. And then we decided to move and I haven’t touched it in almost 3 months. 🤷🏼♀️
Looking forward, I plan to actually use that career coach perk this year, though I feel stronger in my immediate work-trajectory than I did this time last year. Otherwise, I’m not going to set up any expectations for the new year. This feels more like… riding a wave, not drifting aimlessly. Maybe I’ll revisit that in a few months, I’ve never been tied to new year’s resolutions.
Let’s end this with a pizza cat. Happy end-of-2020!
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