Review 2019, prepare for 2020
Tags: yearinreview, discuss, goals
Published: 2019-12-31 13:34:54

The year is coming to a close, and it's a great time to look back upon what we've achieved this past year and what we want to focus on in the coming year. Let's talk about a few key things:

- What things in the last year have been the most significant to you? What are you the most proud of?
- Going forward, what things do you want to focus on?
- And what do you **not** want to learn? 

# My story
In trying to keep this brief and digestible, here's the short format of my 2019/2020 story. If you want to know a bit more and see the specific _SMART_ goals that I've set for myself, check out my [blog post](https://thomashartmann.dev/blog/goodbye-2019-hello-2020/) on the topic. 

## Most significant events of 2019
1. **Community**: 2019 was the year I really got involved with the software community and sharing knowledge. I gave talks and workshops at local meetups, I became a co-organizer of the local Rust meetup group, and I started blogging.
2. **Nix(OS)**: I switched to Linux (specifically NixOS) about a year ago, and it's been a blast. A lot of crawling the internet and irc logs, a lot of learning to use irc, a lot of time spent tinkering, but a blast. Everyone's been so friendly and welcoming and I have learned a whole lot. I've also started to rely on Nix for my dev environments at work.
3. **Containers**: Before 2019, I'd never used containers, but I was aware of them. 2019 saw me working with Docker and Kubernetes on a daily basis, and it's been fantastic. In particular, Kubernetes has become a great interest of mine, and something I'm looking to pursue further.

## Goals for 2020
1. **More community engagement**: I want to further work on the community-aspects in the coming year: talk more, share more, meet more. In particular, by the end of the year I want to have:
  - Given at least three (3) talks/workshops at local meetups.
  - Applied to at least three (3) conferences as a speaker.
2. **More _konfiguration_**: A big part of 2019 was configuration, either as part of Kubernetes or as part of Nix. I'm really into both these tools, but I don't feel that I have mastered them completely just yet. To improve this situation, I want to set up a Kubernetes cluster somewhere and deploy an application developed using Nix for as much as possible. 
3. **More Emacs**: Another tool that I really enjoy, but that I don't know quite well enough. I've been using Emacs for about a year and a half, and I love it. However, I've never really used raw (or custom configured) Emacs; only a version of Spacemacs. Spacemacs is great, but I feel like I need a better understanding of the underlying editor to really become one with Emacs. First step: RTFM.

##  `.ignore`
There's so many cool ideas and concepts around these days, you cannot possibly master them all. If you don't purposefully shut certain things out, it's easy to get overwhelmed. Here's a little list of things that I'm _not_ planning to look into in the coming year:
1. **Machine Learning / Artificial Intelligence**
2. **Go**
3. **IoT / Home automation**

# Your turn
So what about you? Got anything to share? Comments? Let's talk it out.

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Happy new year, folks! Hope you achieve everything you set out to do, and if you don't: I hope that you at least learn and grow from it!