2018 Review

Just like last time around, my "year in review" post is comically late. This time it was so bad I artificially back-dated this post. My blog, my rules!

New Year, New City

I will keep this post brief as at this point I forget most of the details of 2018. However the big theme was moving cities for the first time in my adult life. After many years in Vancouver, we picked up and moved to Victoria in August.

The “Why I'm leaving Vancouver” blogpost is a well-worn trope by now, but I will continue to resist the urge to indulge. I was hesitant about the move myself, but with several months of hindsight it has been a great change. Victoria is extremely bikeable, there's less rain, and the laid-back vibe suits my disposition well.

After considered it for many years, the move gave me the opportunity to dive into remote work. Once I worked out the kinks in my workspace and daily routine (perhaps fodder for a future post), I'm pleased to say that I've really enjoy it. I was already spoiled with a short walking commute in Vancouver, but the flexibility of schedule and proximity to family is hard to beat.

Tech things

Open source and on-the-side coding took a backseat to “real life” priorities this year. I continued to monitor the ReasonML ecosystem, hoping its community would take off and I could justify pitching it seriously at work (hasn't happened yet). Work kept me busy and I was able to focus on helping build a large frontend app (React/Redux/etc).

Books

I still managed to read a fair bit this year (56 books!). Here were my favourites:

A New Habit

I started doing some light journalling. It's been helpful at times to get thoughts out of my head and onto the page. Clearly it hasn't translated to increased blog output yet though!