It’s the last day of the year. Time for me to review the year. Let me start with my failures.
1) I didn’t run a half marathon.
2) I didn’t run a marathon.
That six years I’ve talked about it but never done it. Oh well….
3) I still have a large stack of books I need to read.
Next would be my list of successes:
1) I’ve picked up new programming languages and tools
The ones that come to mind are Haskell, Ruby, Rails and SVK
2) I wrote a 50000 word novel
3) I went on 2 dates
It’s funny looking at the list I’ve made I’ve not done very much in the last year. That’s untrue. I’ve done lots of things this year but none that are easy to quantify.
Starting with the 500 pound gorilla in the room, I’m not sure where I’m headed with my career. I have about 6 years of experience working in the industry under my belt now. It doesn’t seem that long ago that I was just starting out on my career. Somehow I don’t see myself doing this for the next 30 - 40 years. Maybe the next decade but not much more than that. I need to start planning my career for that next step. In a way, that process has already started with more junior people coming in and more senior people moving up. A fairly sizable void has been left for me to work in. People’s perceptions and expectations of me over the last year have changed. Comments from an old manager these last two weeks have made my role even more clear.
I don’t think I’m going to change the way I do things. I’ve never liked the “firing from the hip, cavalier” attitude we take towards certain things. I can definitely do those things but I like thinking things through with more information. I guess it is going to be the case of being more prepared for things. Changing the way I do things in public but not how I do things in private.
Life would be nothing without friends. I’ve always be lucky in that department. People always like to say “I have many acquaintances, but very few friends”. The opposite is true of me I guess. I’ve always had many friends but very few acquaintances. Unfortunately I’ve not done a good job of keeping in touch with old friends something I hope to rectify in the next year.
The question of money has been in my thoughts recently. The issue is not so much money but retirement. Will I be able to retire comfortably? When I started working, I told myself that this was not going to be an issue until I hit this point in my life. Well “this point in my life” is here and I’ve dived head first into it. They say it’s never to late to start but I have my doubts about it. I fear that it may already be too late. But I’ve always been a natural pessimist so maybe I’m just overreacting to all the material I’ve been reading.
Another career? I’ve toyed with the idea of finding another career. I’m not sure if I’m ready to do that yet. What would I do? I actually have a fairly limited skill set. I’m a one trick pony. That worries me.
It looks like 2006 is going to begin the same way 2005 began; I’m a little older but none the wiser.