This is my 4th Year in Review. This page is an effort to put into the words the progress I have made in life over the past 365 days. Areas where I succeeded, areas where I did not, and overall what I am working towards next year.
This review is 100% for me. I share it to encourage others to do something similar, while also increasing my own personal accountability.
I will be asking myself the same three questions I asked last year:
- What went well this year?
- What didn’t go well this year?
- What am I working toward?
What Went Well This Year?
Game Development: I built and launched my first game on the app store. It’s a bit unbelievable when I think about how much I’ve accomplished in one year and frankly, I have built and created an amazing game, especially for my first title. If you’re interested in playing it, just search “Idle Brewery: Beer Tycoon” on either the Google Play or Apple App Store.
Problem Solving: One primary benefit of learning to program is you learn how to solve problems. I have solved thousands of problems this year in game development. Some large, some small, but all were important. I have worked this specific muscle in my brain to the point of exhaustion every week for the past year, and because of this it has continued to get stronger and stronger. It’s a skill that nobody can ever take from me.
Fitness: I moved to Boston in September of 2023 I joined a climbing gym with 4 locations within biking distance from the house I am renting. I have been climbing nonstop whenever I can which has allowed me to complete some fairly difficult climbs (many V4s climbs and a few V5s) which is the upper range of what an intermediate climber is able to do. I’ve been climbing for over 10 years at this point so part of my internal voice says I should be further along in my climbing, but it is just a hobby for me. I’m not training, I’m just climbing as much as I can and I know that if I continue to put time in I’ll slowly get past these difficulty plateaus.
Relationships: The older I get, the more value I place on my relationships. This is even more true these days now that I spend the majority of my workday alone. Each year I push myself to go more and more out of my way to stay connected with everybody that I used to know.
What didn’t go well this year?
Business & Finances: I dipped into my savings this year as I did not have a large amount of income coming in. While my business is profitable, I’m still working on getting it to the level where it can fully sustain me and that will be my top priority for the next year. If I’m being totally honest, part of me is disappointed that I am not further along.
Expectations: In my mind, this was my “Hell or High Water Year” to make my living as a solo game developer. While I made enormous amounts of progress towards that goal, including have a fully published game and a profitable business, I did not fully reach my goal of making a living from game development and for me that is crushing. It put a bit of a damper on the entire end of my year and I’m realizing that there are some underlying issues with how I approach my life. My expectations for myself can often be too high, and I also tend to be too hard on myself.
Mental Health & Mindfulness: The downside of building an online business is the same as the upside. You can constantly monitor it from anywhere, and it’s incredibly tempting to do so every single day. I got into a bad habit of checking in on my different social channels and looking at my app analytics daily, especially right when I woke up. I plan to break this habit in 2024 and live my life in a less reactionary state.
What am I working toward?
Caring Less: This is such a weird goal to type out, but I care way too much about what others think and my work. It got to the point where I became overly obsessive and was working constantly 24/7 which led me to my current state of burnout.
Financial Stability: Same goal as last year. While it’s a bit lackluster to just say “I’m going to continue trying to make a living doing what I’m doing”, it’s the main thing that I am focused on and there’s not many other major goals I feel I can focus on unit I achieve this one.
Mindfulness. My dad recently describes life as “Room A” vs “Room B”. Room A is a room full of salesmen who are only making outgoing calls. Room B is also a group of salesmen making outgoing calls, but also have to deal with incoming requests. Apparently, the people in Room A are much more happier in life because they get to live on and set their own schedules. My brain is HARDWIRED to live in Room B, but I specifically chose a career Room A because I knew it would better for my mental health. I want to embrace that more this year, as well as generally being more mindful of my life in general. As the great Ferriss Bueller once said “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”.