Highlights:
- Expanded scope at work
- 2 stand-alone teams versus one large one
- New area of responsibility
- Managing (and delegating to) team lead and tech leads for the first time
- Having skip-level 1-on-1s
- Got to hire some contractors (to work around the headcount freeze of last year)
- 12th wedding anniversary
- Twins turned 8 years old
- Published more blog posts than in 2022 (31 including this one versus 22 last year)
- Ramped up my pleasure reading, including:
- The South: Jim Crow and Its Afterlives, by Adolph L. Reed
- Caste, by Isabel Wilkerson
- Heavy, by Kiese Laymon
- Spook Street, by Mick Herron (#4 in the Slough House series)
- The List, by Mick Herron
- Old Man’s War, by John Scalzi
- Tiamat’s Wrath, by James S.A. Corey (#8 of 9 in The Expanse series)
- London Rules, by Mick Herron (#5 in the Slough House series)
- The Ghost Brigades, by John Scalzi
- The Last Colony, by John Scalzi
- Beacon 23, by Hugh Howey
- Successful cataract surgery
- Solo vacation this year was to Boston, to visit my cousin and do some touristy stuff
Lowlights:
- Didn’t complete AWS Serverless badge (a work goal for the year that I ran out of time for)
- Had to deliver below strong ratings for an employee for the first time
- Did not work on my health enough