The year 2023 is over and we begin a new year.

Family

For me 2023 was a hard year. Our dog Beau died and my oldest daughter moved on to College. I struggled a bit with the passing of time and I felt much older this year then last.

Losing our family dog this year was hard, Beau was a great dog. He’s sorely missed. I always thought that people who felt so sad for their dogs were being a little silly. Now I understand better.

Work

I clocked my sixth year at Shopify. Three of my friends at the company have either outright quit, moved on to better jobs or been laid off. So that’s a negative.

On the positive there are still people there I enjoy working with. The work has gotten boring but I enjoy that I’ve been long tenured and I know the history of the organization.

A job at Shopify always feels tenuous. I could work super hard and get unlucky in a layoff next year or I could coast and provide very little value and still get a raise. So much of what happens there seems driven by chance as anything else. I’m thankful for my time at Shopify but I don’t think I love the job.

Health

I remain about the same weight as I’ve been for the last 5 or so years. I’d like to be about 5-10 lbs lighter. I think it would be better for my Health but I like eating sweets too much and I yo-yo between 172 and 182 lbs. My back continues to be a source of discomfort. I’m trying all these exercises and it persists in causing me pain. I wish there was a cure for getting older but there’s not. All in all though I remain in good health. Many of my friends are see the decline that comes from being overweight and more then 35 years old. I can still engage in “young man” activities if I want to which is great and I still look 10 years younger then I am.

Hobbies

This year I read sixteen books if you count the two audio books I listened too. The best book I read this year was Stories of Your Life and Others the worst book was probably Radical Candor. I read a lot of books about sailing this year having read three sailing books and one book on boat repair/sailboat ownership. I doubt I’ll read that many books about sailing next year.

Last year I wrote seven blog posts, which is significant. I think one every other month or so is a good pace for me. I went back and skimmed my 2023 blog entries. They are pretty boring! I don’t think I can commit to writing more interesting posts though. This is my life and its mostly pretty boring.

The sail club continues to be an interesting outlet for me. I taught three sailing classes and introduced a lot of new people to the club. I feel like I spent too much time at the sailing club this summer, often being there three days a week. My wife was tired of the amount of time I was spending there and I felt over committed. I think I need a healthier relationship with the club where I’m there 1-2 days a week in the summer and only tech 2 sailing classes OR I find a way to only attend 2-3 days of the sailing class. I do still enjoy sailing and my trip with Guilherme this year was an awesome experience. I don’t think I’ll ever be a full time live aboard, but its a world I like to explore a little sometimes.

Tech

I’ve found it harder to get engaged with Tech. Last year I was very frustrated at my coding ability so I audited the first 16 lectures of Steven Skiena’s 2020 Analysis of Algorithms course. It was difficult. I stalled out during the Graph algorithms and quit the class.

I tried working through Andre Karpathy’s mini GPT implementation youtube series. I think I did the first two videos’ and then became tired of it. It was hard to stay focused. I’m interested in AI and LLM’s but the barrier to understanding their internals feels kind of high. I’ve struggled to care beyond reading the headlines and hype.

I tried reading two software engineering books Data-Oriented Design and and Domain-Driven Design. I read about a quarter of Domain-Driven and 90% of Data-Oriented. Again I didn’t finish either and I’m not sure if I got that much out of them. I learned I agree more with Data-Oriented I felt like Domain-Driven smelled to much of consultant.

I’m not sure if I like tech anymore or not. I must confess I’ve never really been a “hobby” programmer. I’ve more enjoyed just making something work and then moving on. My lack of hobby programming is showing a bit in my career where I’m not a great coder. I do like coding sometimes but I’m really only interested in the outcome of the code, the code itself just feels like a means to a end. I used to have opinions on software design and quality.
I no longer have this. Good software works, bad software does not. How its written isn’t that important.

Goals and looking forward to 2024

I think the my most difficult problem right now is I don’t know what I want. For the least 20 years I’ve wanted to work. Now work isn’t as fulfilling as it was before and I don’t know what to do. I feel like I’ve been in a bit of low key midlife crisis for a bit where I’m uncertain what it is I want out of my life and I worry time is slipping away and if I don’t decide quickly I’ll miss my window. This causes a persistent background anxiety that’s hard to cope with.

I think my goal for 2024 is to try to focus myself towards what I’m motivated to do and not what I feel like a should be doing. I think if I drop the tension down a bit I’ll flow towards the right things.

I don’t think 2024 will be as intense as 2023, I hope this will give some space to find what I’m looking for.