Hello friends!
Welcome to my eleventh annual yearly review post! How wild. When I started doing this, I did not expect to keep it up this long.
2021 continued 2020’s trend of being super weird. That being said, we tried to make it a little normal, assuming that Covid is the new normal. I am going to try and structure this post like 2019 instead of 2020, but who knows. I may give up halfway through.
You can read past years:
January, February & March
January, February & March were not very interesting months. Still deep in the heart of the pandemic, not much was happening. Melissa started to go to the Culinary Institute of America, and our hot water heater broke. We also continued to find out interesting things about being home owners in a place that snows. Not a lot of photos during this time, but we did alright.
Edit: I know why there are no photos, Melissa and I had Covid in March! This explains it.
April
We got our first vaccine shot and celebrated our third anniversary a few days early with a trip into the city! We also continued to explore Hudson Valley with a trip to Cold Spring.
Finally, @ifosteve released our book on Golang this month, Reliable Webservers with Go. It was originally written to be a print book, but for various reasons, ended up as an online course thing. We’re both really proud of it.
May
May was apparently a very quiet month. Mel and I got our second shot. @alwaysunday visited us briefly. Beasley napped on couches.
June
June was big though! Melissa and I got tickets to see the Nets in a playoff game, which was an absolute blast. My mom visited, and Melissa took the three of us to dinner at CIA. This was particularly cool because I hadn’t been allowed to go on campus before because of Covid. My mom and I also went and saw a lot of art.
July
July was the first month that felt… normal? Mel and I did a quick trip to visit to Philly to see our friends Carl and Sam. We also attended the soft-launch of the new Legoland in New York, which was a lot of fun.
August
In August I got to see two of my favorite people timball and Will. Also Melissa and I went to Portland, Maine for a few days and ate a lot of delicious seafood. Our first real trip since the pandemic began!
September
At the end of September, I made a quick trip out west to meet a lot of my coworkers for the first time (if you remember, I left Google CRE for a small startup called Time By Ping at the end of 2020). I spent time in both SF and LA, and saw a lot of people I hadn’t seen in a long time and met about 60% of my coworkers. I also went sea fishing for the first time, and while it was fun, learned that I get far too seasick to do it again.
October
For most of the fall, Mel was working at Common Ground Farm here in Beacon. October is also prime apple picking season in New York. So we ended up spending a lot of weekends at various farms, enjoying the fall weather and food.
November
November is the month of Mel’s favorite season, Thanksgiving! She started doing cooking demos at local farmers markets, and cooked a huge meal for my family, who all visited from the west coast for the week. I particularly enjoyed hanging out with my brother Travis, as I hadn’t seen him in person since the pandemic started. It reminded me how much I missed him, and how phone calls don’t quite substitute for being in person.
December
We ended the year with a trip to St. Croix, an island in the U.S. Virgin Islands. The five of us spent six days exploring the wonderful island, soaking up the sun, and just enjoying each others company.
While we were relaxing, I launched a Kickstarter Campaign for a collection of short stories. One thing I had been thinking about was how I wanted to go back to writing fiction, which I did a lot of in high school and college. I sketched out some ideas, and decided a kickstarter would force accountability. Given the outpouring of support I’ve received, it really had gotten me back on the writing train.
Edit: I also minted my first NFT thirty minutes till midnight on NYE.
Goals
I’ve stopped making my quarterly goal review posts for a while now, and I really gotta get back on the train. The years I do quarterly goal reviews, I finish so many more of my goals. That being said, I did read and code a lot this year.
2021 Goal Review
Crossed out things I didn’t complete. I’m giving myself a C.
Health
Get 10k steps an average of three days a week.Go for a bike ride once a week.Track what you eat for a month.Go fishing at least six times.
Brain
- Finish Go Book
Journal four days a week, blog once a week.- Do at least 20 mentor-ship calls.
Draw once a week.Launch four projects to the world and promote them.
Community
- Don’t buy anything physical online for the first month of every quarter (January, April, July, October).
Volunteer at least once a quarter locally.Attend a community meeting at least once a quarter.
2022 Goals
Ok. I still like the three sections of goals that I’ve had for the past few years, but I’m going to lower it to two goals per section, to make myself more focused.
Health
My physical health is declining, and with my move to the suburbs in 2020, I can no longer rely on my daily movement to cover me. So here’s to focused exercise.
- Ride 200 miles on a stationary bike each quarter.
- Go for a walk once a week.
Brain
This is the area I do the best in every year, so here’s hoping I keep it up.
- Read four nonfiction books
- Finish writing and printing locative.garden.
Community
I liked these two goals a lot, and didn’t do either of them. Not for want of trying, but I’m going to put them up again, in hopes that covid slows down. If I do any of them once I’ll be happy, but the goal is once a quarter.
- Volunteer at least once a quarter.
- Attend a community meeting at least once a quarter.
Fin.
That’s all for now! Here’s hoping the pandemic calms down a bit, and we can see each other in 2022. I am particularly excited for my 34th birthday, which is on 2022-02-22. So many twos!
I love you all, and appreciate your support. Know that even if we haven’t talked in a few years, I still think highly of you, and wish you a happy trip around the sun.
/Nat