The fact that this post isn’t being published until late in January 2024 pretty much reflects the state of my blog over the past year. I completely neglected my blog in 2023 so it’s fitting that I’m late in posting what my 2023 looked like. So, without further delay, let’s get into it.
Welcome to another Year in Review post where I spend a bit of time reflecting on what happened last year to hopefully position myself better for the year to come. If you are interested in past years, check out my 2020, 2021, and 2022 reviews.
My method
As a refresher, I manage my yearly goals in Evernote with a note titled fittingly `2023 Goals`. I then refer to this note throughout the year, documenting accomplishments, adding new items, and providing clarifications as needed.
Just as I neglected my blog this year, I also only sporadically revisited my goals throughout the year. In fact, as of this writing in late January, I have yet to write my 2024 goals. Something is obviously wrong with me and I need to do better.
Each year I choose a word that will be used as my core guiding principle or theme for the year.
2023’s Word of the Year: Sustain
Interesting word considering what I’ve already said above. We’ll examine this a bit beyond the emptiness of my blog to see if the word reflected my year beyond the blog or not.
The intent when I set that as the word of the year was to continue the solid practices and approaches that I put in place over the last couple of years and to maintain consistency with my growth and evolution.
When looking back at the year and wondering if I sustained these practices, I think I did ok but could’ve definitely done better.
Professional Areas
This section covers both my full-time role in my career as well as the part-time work I do here on this blog and for personal branding.
In 2023 I continued my role as the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Dignari and split my time across a few different focus areas—delivering for new and existing clients, supporting business development, and continuing to build out core company capabilities and culture.
2023 had me much deeper in hands-on delivery work for an important client and that pretty much consumed me during the year. This required me putting in full-time for this client in a solutions architect role and as a result I was not able to focus as much attention on company or personal initiatives.
❌ Achieve an additional technical certification
In 2022 I was able to finally spend some time attaining my AWS Solutions Architect – Associate certification and that felt great. As I headed into 2023 I was ready to tick off another certification, however, given the client delivery demands that I mentioned, I was unable to achieve this goal.
In practice, this tends to be a recurring goal anyway and one that I try to capitalize on whenever I have slower periods at work. Future possibilities include the AWS Solutions Architect – Professional, TOGAF, or Microsoft Azure related certifications. I also need to make sure I keep my CISSP active. I attained that in 2006 and want to make sure I don’t have to take that test again. Hard to believe that was 18 years ago. Wow, how time flies.
❌ Publish more than 10 blog posts on personal blog
I dialed back my goal from 52 blog posts in previous years to just 10 hoping that I’d hit the mark. I still failed to meet it. Part of me wants to create a goal for 2024 to, “Publish 1 blog post” and see if I can hit it. This is becoming laughable.
❌ Host at least 1 Community of Practice meeting and 1 Lunch and Learn per month
To help create a collaborative learning environment at work I established Communities of Practice and Lunch and Learns in past years. 2023’s goal was to ensure some consistency in holding these events. Unfortunately, we were not able to meet at all for our Digital Identity Community of Practice in 2023. Hopefully we spin that back up in 2024 as there’s a lot happening in that technical domain.
We did have a number of Lunch and Learns this year but I’d still like to see more of these. Our company has had tremendous growth and there are so many people with unique skills that we’ve brought into the company. I’d love for them to share with the larger community their skills and experiences. Too many times people think the things they know are commonplace when in reality they are often completely mysterious to others.
Personal Areas
Here are how my personal goals shaked out last year.
✅ Maintain healthy lifestyle and complete all annual health checks
This is a recurring goal now that I’m over 50. It’s incredibly important to make sure you have these regularly occurring checks of your health so that you can (hopefully) identify any issues or anomalies as they start to take root. Think of it as proactive monitoring.
I had a few distinct goals this year in addition to general best practices.
- Get a colonoscopy
- Return to regular dental appointments
- Maintain consistent target weight
Each of these I achieved and feel great about it.
As I’ve written about previously, I’ve really made an effort to reduce the amount of meat that I eat. I’m happy to say that I continued that practice in 2023. In 2024 I’m leaning even further into the vegetarian/vegan lifestyle. While I’m not hardcore about it, and will have chicken and fish from time to time, I’m still going to opt for plant-based alternatives if they are available.
I also went to the gym consistently in 2023, especially toward the end of the year. Given the hip issues I have when jogging I’ve moved back into weight training. It’s actually quite nice being an older man in the gym lifting weights. I now get to look across the gym at the young guys trying to hoist massive amount of weight to gain mass while I strictly focus on form to ensure my body remains physically fit as I age. Now that I’m “an old guy” I get to lift lighter weight, do body weight exercises, and walk on the treadmill without feeling the pressure of “ego lifting”.
❌ Read 20 books
I typically have a reading goal on my list and it’s usually one book per month. I set out in 2023 to read even more and stretched from 12 to 20 books as a goal. Unfortunately, given what I’ve stated earlier about the client delivery work, I missed on this goal. I did read some fantastic books, but I’d really like to find more time to read in 2024.
Here are the books I read this year:
- February – Golden Son (Pierce Brown)
- February – Microservices Up & Running (O’Reilly)
- August – The Brothers Karamazov (Fyodor Dostoevsky) ❤️
- August – The Solutionists – How Businesses Can Fix the Future (Solitaire Townsend)
- August – From Strength to Strength (Arthur C. Brooks)
- November – The DevOps Handbook (multiple authors)
- December – Billy Summers (Stephen King)
- December – Killers of the Flower Moon (David Grann)
❤️ = a favorite
Of the 8 books I read, 3 of them were fiction. This is an unusual percentage for me as I typically enjoy nonfiction more. The one book that stood out for me this year was The Brothers Karamazov. I’ve long heard that this is one of the best, if not the best, book every written. I decided to check it out and wasn’t disappointed. Great book and highly recommended. It’s a long one but if you commit yourself to it, you’ll enjoy it.
✅ Complete home improvements
There were a couple of sub-goals in this one and I did pretty well with this goal overall. We were able to do a major home renovation project that we had on our list and I was also able to reduce some of the clutter we’ve gained over the years. If I had my way, I’d be living a minimalist lifestyle but the family isn’t exactly on the same wavelength. Everything I want to get rid of takes some negotiating.
Going forward in 2024 I’m looking to expand my personal home improvement skils. We are officially empty nesters so I’m on the lookout for hobbies. I’m thinking home improvement may be one of them. I just need to buy some more power tools and set up an official work bench. We’ll see if this happens in 2024.
✅ Practice Spanish every day
I’ve always wanted to be able to speak a foreign language. I took 4 years of French in school but feel Spanish is the more useful language to spend time on. Given my limited time, this is really a part time activity I try to adhere to throughout the year. I mostly rely on Duolingo and as of this writing I’m happy to state that I have a 540 day streak going!
In early January 2024 my wife and I celebrated our 30th anniversary by going to Spain. Of course I leveraged my new Spanish skills as much as possible and was able to hold limited conversations on multiple occasions. It’s incredibly satisfying to be able to converse with someone in another language. In my opinion it also shows respect to them and their culture by putting in the effort to try to communicate in their native language.
More of this to come in 2024 for sure.
✅ Cook more at home
While we still order out way too often, I do feel I did a good job with this goal. Given the switch to a plant-based diet, I find myself needing/wanting to cook more myself. Beans, rice, steamed vegetables, and other staple meals are easy to prepare and I find myself enjoying the process. This could also be another hobby I build out in the coming years.
❌ Complete daily habits
I also created a daily habit list that I try to do every day. I wasn’t exactly consistent with it but having it as an item on the list is sure to make me more accountable. At least that’s the idea. I’m going to mark it as unfulfilled given I didn’t do it as consistently as I intended.
Here’s my list of daily habits from 2023.
- Do pushups
- Walk at least a mile
- Practice Spanish
- Skin care routine
- Read a book
Summary
There you have it. My look back at my 2023. Overall, it was a pretty good year.
It was challenging from a professional perspective as I was deeply embedded in client delivery and unable to complete many of my personal and professional goals. However, our company continued to grow and thrive and that’s all I can really hope for. In 2024 I will try to pull myself back out of day-to-day client delivery so I can put in more effort to launch and grow some of my planned company initiatives.
Personally I continued to evolve, and I think improve, as a husband, father, and human. I’m happy with where I’m at with my healthy lifestyle but can always find ways to optimize. I’m big on self improvement and will continue to try to make myself better by maintaining an open mind, learning new things, and being genuine in all I do. I will strive to make life better for those in my life and for those that I encounter randomly throughout the day.
When I think about it, I believe more of us should be a lot more like Ted Lasso. Find the good in people and take the high road always. Be a good person regardless of how you might feel in the moment. I’m going to try and be more like Lasso in 2024 and see how that goes.
Cheers!