We’re already well past New Year, so it’s very much time for another look back and forward.

Why?

Why do I do this, you might ask? Well, it’s nice to take a step away from the daily rush and reflect over a previous time period. That can be any period of time, but it might as well be a year. And then you might as well do it at the transition to a new year.

It helps you look back at good times, bad times, missed opportunities, lessons learned, things you excelled in,… It also helps if you are explicit about any goals you set for the coming year. It adds a little extra (but positive) pressure to achieve them. Even if a changing situation can mean you throw out the goals after a few weeks and replace them with new ones. That’s all fine.

The nice thing is that if you do this regularly, you can group these reflections (like I did here) and see how your life evolved over the years. It doesn’t have to be an entire blog post if you don’t want to. I know people who just jot down some points in a notebook.

Business

Just like COVID-19 continued its rampage (which I hoped would end in 2021, haha), my life has continued along the same path. Less destructive though, luckily.

I have successfully shifted two ASP.NET 4.6 web apps to Google Cloud, merged two ASP.NET web apps into one, and finished a Python/MongoDB project. That was great fun and encourages me to continue along the path of helping companies with legacy applications.

In fact, both clients have given me new projects: migrating pieces of a Python monolith to a NodeJS microservices and migrating the .NET 4.6 apps to .NET 6. Busy times ahead!

I hope to focus more on legacy code the coming year.

Personal

The dog is doing great:

I’m likely to do a 1/4 triathlon this year. Though I haven’t been training nearly as much as I should.

Writing

I haven’t found the time to write as much any more. That is unfortunate but it is what it is. I’ve had periods of less writing in the past as well. Nothing to worry about.

I do hope to put out some more content by the end of the year. I have all sorts of ideas, but we’ll see what the future brings. I know I should make commitments otherwise it’s too easy to just let the ideas remain ideas. But I’m good for now 🙂