My 2018 - A Look Back

The last week of the year is when everyone seems to be writing and publishing their own year in review posts and it seems like a great opportunity for me to spend a few minutes looking back on my year.

Biking

I started out 2018 doing a mountain bike race in January called the Whole Enchilada, which is basically riding all the trails at the USNWC, about 25 miles. My goal was to finish the race but I failed. I didn’t have the legs nor the energy to do the last trail. From this I decided I was going to step up my riding so I could complete it in 2019.

I felt like I was on track but then I crashed last month and broke my hand. I’ll be out of commission for at least another two months so it’s quit unfortunate that I will not even get to enter the one thing I was pushing myself toward.

Outside of the mountain biking I bought a gravel bike and did my first half century and also rode it to the lake a few days and worked from a hammock.

I plan to do more of that once the weather warms back up and my hand heals.

Blogging

At the end of 2017 I decided I wanted to get back into blogging and made an internal goal to maintain a streak of blogging everyday for the month of January.

I continued that streak until March and then really slacked off June through September, then picked up again October.

Publishing everyday was a challenge but the one nice side effect is it forced me to look around at everything for content ideas. Of course, the downside is by posting so often I never had time to really sit down and write in depth pieces, but that is never my style. I like to be a curator which fits perfectly with quick posts.

For 2019 I do want to continue blogging and try to force myself out of just tweeting when I have something to say.

Work

In 2018 I had a busy year making things. First I work full time for UserScape and then run Laravel News on the side. Those two take up many hours a week. Outside of these I helped run Laracon Online, LaraJobs, I created Laravel Events, and of course published the Laravel Newsletter almost every Sunday.

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Personal

Outside of biking and breaking my hand I also had Lasik at the end of November and it’s the best thing I’ve done for myself. It’s hard for me to describe going from always wearing glasses to not even thinking about them. It’s really amazing laying in bed and not having the frames dig into your head, or exercising and not having to worry about them slipping off.

I also kept a daily log book for the first time ever and looking back through it is pretty cool. I like being able to flip through the pages and remember the day. That’s not something I’ve been able to duplicate digitally. Yeah

Farewell 2018

That about sums up my year and I’m looking forward to 2019. I have a few big plans that I hope to accomplish and a lot of little things. Hopefully, I’ll keep myself accountable and focused on the positive things.

Best of luck to you in 2019!