For the last two and a half years, ever since Bekki started her Ph.D. program, I've been splitting my time between New York and Indiana. At first, as part of a larger group expected to work together from the New York office on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I could at best fly out on a Thursday evening, work remotely Friday and Monday, and fly back Monday night. After a year of that, I transferred (along with my product and team) to another group in order for us to be better managed, which had the pleasant side effect of enabling me to stay and work from Bloomington for stints of a week or longer.

Another side effect of a steady diet of lighter travel and enlightened management was that by the time 2013 rolled around, I realized I was mentally ready to prioritize my health. If you were to guess that getting healthier might be accompanied by other improvements, you'd be right. I celebrated my 35th birthday yesterday, so I'm of a mind to reflect on some ways in which 2013 went well for me and how I intend to build on each in 2014.

Health

I hoped — but initially didn't quite believe — that I was prioritizing my health. I treated my weight loss as a project to be managed. Other than assigning arbitrarily fixed scope (”lose 45 pounds”) and fixed deadline (”in a year”), I managed it with an Agile-influenced self-designed process that helped me make the daily choices I wanted to make, radiated current status visually at home and at work, prompted me to periodically review progress, and incremented itself one simplest-change-that-could-possibly-help(-and-stick) at a time.

As is typical when the stated goal and the stated deadline are both “fixed”, one must be prepared in the end to adjust the goal. I didn't lose 45 pounds. But because the parameters were of my own invention, I don't feel disappointed in the least about the project. Rather the contrary: I'm nearly 30 pounds lighter than a year ago, I feel and look more like myself, and I've managed to convince myself that I really have been prioritizing my health.

For 2014, now that I trust what I've been doing, I'm willing to make more significant lifestyle changes.

Writing

I restored this site to operation and wrote 22 articles. You won't be surprised that my two most frequent topics were (1) health and (2) Test-Driven Development.

I was surprised to have written so much. In 2014 I'll make a point of delivering no fewer than 26 articles, no less often than every two weeks.

NetBSD

One of the TDD-related articles was from my talk at pkgsrcCon in Berlin. As a longtime member of pkgsrc-pmc, the steering committee for the pkgsrc package management system, I have long felt the need to demonstrate technical leadership by improving the architecture of the system. I plan to attend this summer's pkgsrcCon in London; I hope by then I've done more than merely maintain my packages, and can show some consequential improvements to pkgsrc internals.

I was elected to the Board of the NetBSD Foundation. In 2013, I learned what the board does and how it does it, and represented NetBSD and pkgsrc in two interviews. If health was last year's top priority for me, NetBSD is this year's.

Philolexian

I've been serving for several years on the Board of the Philolexian Foundation, which supports the operation and strivings of the Philolexian Society of Columbia University. This year I ascended to President. I also took inspiration from my frequent proximity to Indiana University to write and perform a reasonably bad poem at Philo's annual Alfred Joyce Kilmer Memorial Bad Poetry Contest.

Ikiwiki

Two of the articles featuring Test-Driven Development were about ikiwiki, web content management software I've used to solve publishing problems for NetBSD and Philolexian. Before 2014 is out, I'll finally be publishing this site with ikiwiki too.

Code

Another of the Test-Driven Development articles reflected my deepened understanding that TDD is a technique for learning rapidly what's going on in code, even (maybe especially) when one doesn't know the language well. I figured that out because a workshop at CodeMash 2013 pleasantly forced me to. CodeMash was the first software development conference I ever attended and the first of three in 2013. The third was Software Craftsmanship North America, where I experienced my first Code Retreat and the long-absent, much-needed feeling of being among peers whose software values matched mine.

In 2014 I intend to spend much less time with people who don't care about what I care about, and much more time with people who do.

Teams

The other conference I attended last year (as a newly minted Certified Scrum Professional) was Scrum Gathering Las Vegas. Thirty of my most valuable 2013 minutes were spent at the SGLAS Coaches' Clinic talking with Roger Brown. Considering coaching as a career, I wanted a coach to help me understand more precisely what that looks like and whether I might be able to do it well. Roger's answers to my questions about the coaching life fit my mental model — and when I answered his questions, his reactions indicated that I'd be smart to try it.

Work

Another thirty of my most valuable 2013 minutes were spent at the New York office talking with a senior manager. I shared with him my desire to coach, the potential benefits to the company, and my need to validate the idea. He knew of a team looking for some coaching and sent me to Montreal to coach them.

For a total of five days surrounding Thanksgiving with the family in New York, I worked on-site with the team as a whole and individually, developers and managers, hands-on and nonstop, and it was exhausting and exhilarating. My brief time with that team validated for me that I was already pretty decent at coaching, that I could be great at it, that it might let me make a small dent in the universe, and that I loved it.

In 2013 I determined that I needed to feel greater appreciation for my work, that I was willing to identify and deliver more valuable work in order to get it, and that helping teams make better decisions about software development would be highly valuable.

In 2014 I expect my responsibilities to change from managing a single product to coaching multiple teams, and I expect my efforts to produce observably meaningful results for all involved.

Home

A year ago the fact of living in New York wasn't the bottleneck to improving my health. A few minimal effective changes later, I feel otherwise. I'm doing well; to do better, I need to be able to safely ride my bike on pleasant paths without shlepping it up and down three flights of stairs, to randomly drop by a tennis or basketball court and probably get to play, to comfortably house some sort of dog (preferably large) who requires lots of walks, to relax in a quiet home, and to travel less.

My team isn't — indeed, most of the company's development teams aren't — in New York. So continuing to live there wouldn't win me much effectiveness or save me much travel. If I were to split my time such that my periodic trips were to the New York office, the proportions would be quantitatively different, but the arrangement wouldn't be qualitatively different.

My life isn't in New York. To a midwesterner by temperament, it never could have been. I'm grateful for eight and a half formative years there, and I'll be happy to see it every time I visit, but New York was only ever a place I tolerated in order to get what I needed.

Everything I need now is in Bloomington.

Self

When I think about how I spent my 35th solar orbit, I feel anything is possible in the next one. I feel powerful. More than ever I know who I am, who's for me, and who I'm for.