Two thousand fifteen was a hell of a year!

Family

This year my daughter became a senior, my wife and I celebrated our 9th year together, and my son graduated high school. It was really weird seeing my son walk across the stage at his graduation. Together, we learned that nobody in my family shares my love of wilderness camping—unfortunately we learned this on about day 2 of a 4 night wilderness camping trip. We did not spend the fourth night, but the story of our ill-fated trip was entirely worth leaving a day early.

We spent a long, temperate spring and summer kayaking, traveling, and enjoying the outdoors. I hope that we’ll be able to get at least a year or two more of this before the kids create lives that are completely separate from ours. I assume that all parents have this cliche moment when their children become adults.

Work

As last year ended, I found out that the scrappy little ecommerce company I had joined one year prior had been purchased; and not just purchased, but obtained by a huge IT services entity. I fully expected to start this year with a job search.

As the year kicked off, I agreed to stick around for a while to see if my new overlords were telling the truth when they said that they didn’t want to make us all corporate—but truth be told, I still assumed I was going to spend my sprint job hunting.

I’m pleased that I stuck around, as it has turned out that they were right. I’ve enjoyed a pretty fantastic year with my new employer, and look forward to exciting news, new challenges, and fulfilling work in the coming year.

Next Year

I don’t do new year’s resolutions, but I do have a few goals:

• More personal travel…next year I want to visit friends on the west coast, take a few kayaking and camping trips up north, and plan a getaway to somewhere nice with Ger
• No increase to work travel…I don’t love traveling for work, but I do see the necessity at times—I would like to keep that to a minimum if possible though
• Cycle more…I did almost no cycling this year, and I miss doing it. I would really like to get back up to doing long tours again. Years ago, I had the goal of doing the ODRAM—it’s time to get moving back in that direction again

This year was a great year, if next year is half as good, I’ll be pretty happy!

But I’d prefer that next year be an improvement, all the same.