Welcome to Jekyll!

As 2023 winds to a close, I seem to be drawn toward reflection. More so this year than in the past I have found myself thinking about and drawing on the past even while I look to the future. From the distant past like words my children said when they were little to the more recent accomplishments and challenges of the past year. Maybe this is because of the reading that I have done over the year, or the classes I have taken, or the fact I am getting older, this year, more than any I can remember I am acutely aware that I am not the same man today as I was on January 1st, 2023. And that, I know is a good thing.

The Good

2023 was a good year. Reading, education, vacations, kids playing hockey, dates with my wife, I can’t really complain about 2023. Inflation sucks, low pays suck, but in the end, we are on this side of the dirt. Healthy and progressing forward, at what ever speed we may be doing it.

Year In Books

This year I have read 23 books. I miscounted earlier when I posted on Twitter that I read 16. These books ranged in topic from theology and philosophy to fantasy and sci-fi. Going back through all of my book notes helped this year! I won’t list them all out here, I hope to have a decent book log published in the coming days, but this is a good as place as any for the time being.

From the fields of theology/religion/Orthodoxy I read Time and Despondency by Dr. Nicole Roccas, The Whole Council of God by Fr. Stephen De Young, On the Incarnation by St. Athanasius with Forward by C.S. Lewis, and a couple more books including some books of the Bible.

I have read or re-read several fantasy and science fiction novels. The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion all by J.R.R. Tolkien. I have also read Red Rising, Golden Son, and Morning Star by Pierce Brown, a book series that had me excited to read the next one! It’s been a long time since a ‘new’ book had me finishing books in less than a week or two.

On the philosophy front, I read Five Dialogues by Plato and How to be Perfect by Michael Schur. Both are quality books in their own right, but not the end of the world if you never read them at all.

From the DIY and Self-help section in the small but growing Dave Kalaluhi Memorial Library, I read Mind Management not Time Management and Digital Zettelkasten by David Kadavy. The former helped me to foster at least a little bit of creativity (a problem that is mine, not the books) and the latter was good primer into the world of Zettelkasten. I have a Zettelkasten system that maybe I will one day outline, though it is not digital. I started the year with Ryder Carroll’s Bullet Journal Method. And while I was not as productive as I wanted to be in 2023, I was a hell of a lot more organized and productive than 2022. If you get discouraged by all of the beautifully time-consuming ideas of Bullet Journaling read this book. Finally, I read Don Casey’s Inspecting the Aging Sailboat. Not much to say about this one, small book, kind of helpful, still don’t own a sailboat.

Beyond that I’ve read numerous articles on various topics, across those fields as well as computer science, video games, movies and entertainment and so much more. The few additional books I’ve read were textbooks for the classes I have taken over the year.

I have watched some lectures (outside of class) and listened to a fair amount of episodes of several podcasts that I listen to as well. I won’t list them here, but maybe a podcast log in the future to complement that book log.

Year In Education

Speaking of taking classes, I started back to school this year to complete my Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology. At the end of my current course, which ends the second week of 2024 because of the holidays, I will be about 40-ish% done with my B.S. and over 60% with my A.A. which I will get in my current program. I currently have a 3.91 GPA!!! This is the highest my GPA has ever been in all of my schooling years! I could not even dream of this achievement with the love and support of my wife and kids! They have been so supportive and understanding that it’s not even fair!

While I’m on the subject of education, I am just about to sit for my professional certification in almost 7 years, and it has been a long time coming. On January 3rd, 2024 I will sit for my Terraform Associate exam and shortly after that I will schedule my HashiCorp Certified Instructor Exam. I was really hoping to finish these up in 2023 proper, but the last part of the year got away from me. I’ll chalk that up to an easily attainable objective for 2024!

Year In Family

In my personal life, my family and I “took the trips” as Orland Bradford “Brad” McVie would say. We had a wonderful vacation back to the OBX, for the first time in three years! We ate a ton of good food and all in had a great time and made some wonderful memories!

We spent much of our summer weekends at the cottage and explored 99% of the lake’s shoreline from our pontoon boat. The fishing was garbage this year, but a bad day on the water is better than a good day at the office.

This year, my eldest son participated in his first hockey tournament! It was the Winter Legends Draft in Aberdeen NJ, and his team swept the 14u division and took home the gold. Not bad for his first run. After seeing his older brother in his first tournament, my middle son started to train and take hockey a little more seriously because he wants to do it next year. My youngest son just wants skates so he can skate like his big brothers. I think he’ll be on skates after the holidays.

The Challenges

2023 was not a terrible year at all! I do, however, have some misses, like this blog! I wanted to launch Q1 but it is now EOY and I am not really ready to launch at all. I will say that I am further along than not, and my launch feels much more imminent than it has in the past.

Once again I have failed miserably when it comes to health and fitness! This is one area I really hope to improve as I move through 2024.

I did miss some objectives at work this year, mostly around education, I prioritized my college objectives over business learning objectives. In 2024 I hope that I can align those from the start, so it doesn’t look like I’m just sitting around.

In The End

After all is said and done, my biggest accomplishments of 2023 were maintaining positive and awesome relationships with my wife and kids, strengthening a reading habit that allowed me to read 23 books, and ending my first year back in college with a 3.91 GPA.

The biggest challenges that I had this year were, balancing life, school, and work, moving/progressing forward, sometimes you just feel like there’s no progress, and keeping my ADHD in check with my bullet journal.

This was a fun exercise for me this year, and my next article should be my 2024 annual strategy/plan. I hope this is of sufficient length that I can use this to being working with themes for the website. If it is not, I will just lorem ipsum this until it is.