Barbarian Meets Coding
barbarianmeetscoding

WebDev, UX & a Pinch of Fantasy

3 minutes readpersonal

Goodbye 2014, Hello 2015!!

Following the now tradition of the yearly reflective summary, it is time for the wrap-up blog post on what I achieved on 2014, which were my biggest #fails and what I am planning to do in 2015. Here it goes!

In 2014 I:

  • Had a beyond awesome year with my beloved Malin filled with awesome moments like our trip to Japan and moving from Linköping to Stockholm.
  • Started my own company and built a website as a company hub.
  • Had a great year working as a software developer at Medius where I got to continue developing my skills as a software developer and working with great colleagues.
  • Got a new job in Stockholm at an awesome company, Active Solution, and I am looking forward to get started in January.
  • Wrote 32 blog posts this year, and also recorded my first video ever.
  • Created several new presentations this year on RavenDB, Knockout.js components, developer productivity, LESS, Ionic and REST, and gave two talks in our local .NET user group in Linköping.
  • Read 50 books on programming, business, fantasy, sci-fi and self-improvement, almost a book per week of the year.
  • Went to a hackathon and built pendel panda, an awesome experience both for the chance of working with a great team with very diverse skills and for being able to work with Ionic and dip my toes into the hybrid mobile development scene.
  • Did lots of learning, this year focusing on:
    • JavaScript and its more functional flavors
    • Angular
    • Ionic, PhoneGap, Cordova and hybrid mobile development
    • REST and Hypermedia
  • This is my third year since I quit smoking and I am still going strong.
  • Led a healthy lifestyle with a great work-life balance, lots of training (running and weightlifting) and healthy eating. It got a little screwed towards the end of the year when I got a shoulder injury but I’m back now biatches! :)

Some of my biggest #fails, things that I really wanted to achieve but I didn’t were:

  • I did not write a book
  • Even though I started a company, built a website for it, and started developing a couple of new features for quiz4couples I never got anything finished, nor built any new product at all, which sucks. This was a BIG fail for me.
  • Didn’t invest almost any time in improving my design/art skills

If I had to summarize 2014 I would call it a year of big changes with moving to Stockholm after living the last 4 years in Linköping and starting a new job at the center. I think I spent a lot of energy and time in both of these milestones, but in spite of this all I still got a lot of things done.

In 2015 I want to:

  • continue investing in my great relationship with Malin :)
  • develop at least one product with my company
  • write a short book
  • become an even more awesome software developer and specialize more in front-end development
  • blog smarter, being more consistent developing a writing habit instead of doing one-time-writing-marathons as I do know almost a 80% of the time.
  • invest more time in my drawing/design/art skills
  • continue investing in a healthy lifestyle

but above all I want to become a finisher, I want to spend this year focusing on strengthening the habit of finishing the things that I start.

Hope that you also had a great 2014 and that an even more awesome 2015 awaits you! Let’s get started kicking some ass!… and finishing the goddamn stuff :)


Jaime González García

Written by Jaime González García , dad, husband, software engineer, ux designer, amateur pixel artist, tinkerer and master of the arcane arts. You can also find him on Twitter jabbering about random stuff.Jaime González García