We’ve arrived! Not necessarily to something better, but at least to something new. It’s been 12 months since my last post (2019’s review)—my longest gap in public writing. This makes me sad. A few years ago, writing was essential to me: it was somewhere ideas brewed, an outlet, a reminder…

After three years, the time has come for me to part ways with Microsoft. In January 2020, I was over the moon to get hired as a full-time employee at the Microsoft, a company of talented people that’s learned from its failures, reinvented itself, and become a beacon of long-term…

After the last of our good habits tapered off with the Fall, Anna and I took a two-week social media hiatus for Christmas break. I know this isn’t novel anymore, but it remains surprisingly difficult. Why? It took me four days to edit this post, finally nixing every instance of…

Yo, yo, yo! It’s my first post in months, and we’re at the end of the year already 😫 So, I figured I should write a long one; buckle up! Right off the bat, I’m going to come out and say it: I barely achieved any of the goals I…

I’ve had some variation of “speak at a local meetup” on my goals list for a couple years now, but every time I get near the subject I avoid it—so much so, I didn’t even write it down this year. I gave into my fear for a long time, but…

This shouldn’t be surprising. And it probably wouldn’t take quitting to arrive at the same conclusion. But let me back up and see how I got here. How I Got Here Social networking really took off with MySpace in the early 2000s, where teenagers (at my time) created online profiles and had “friend” connections—at…

It’s that time again, when we can all look back at what we wanted to accomplish and feel totally insignificant. Just kidding—well, kind of. I often visit the blog posts of my professional “heroes” and feel like I’m doing absolutely nothing in comparison. It’s good to celebrate successes and get…

I used to think being a perfectionist was fine and good. It’s just healthy self-scrutiny. We’re supposed to analyze and hold ourselves to a high standard, right? To strive to be our best? Not anymore. Not once I realized what’s really happening. I need to be reminded often of a…

Missing Goals, But Doing Other Stuff Too One of the most important steps in the goal-setting process is a review at the end. Did you do what you said you would? (Or do your goals need to be refined, given more time, or scrapped entirely?) In other words: I looked back at the goals I set, and…