2013 :: Year in Review

2013 was an interesting year. My wife and I had a lot of good and some not so good things go on; she got full time at her job, my company moved to Irvine, I got injured and had back surgery, and we adopted a horse.

The move from LA to Irvine has been great for pretty much every part of my life and health (apparently even though I grew up there I’m not used to the smog and pollution concentrations in LA anymore). While I’ve had more time for a lot of things like being home, games, side projects, etc I seem to have lost as much time and drive for writing. Part of this is due to helping write code and documentation at work since moving on to being Director instead of just lead engineer. My goal at the beginning of 2013 was to write something every day- writing is a hobby that I quite enjoy. While I was taking a train every day it was easy to set aside time for writing every day; about 45 minutes as a matter of fact! February brought some really hectic times at work and then March brought moving the development team to Irvine and my promotion which combined took out the time I had previously used to write a lot. I still have about 14 things in variously edited stages that I’d like to get out at some points: ranging from Aaron Swartz to Pokemon games to project management tips and tricks to programming articles.

Possibly the biggest impact on my year was back surgery: L5 disc exploded while sprinting. One of the best surgeons on the west coast did my surgery; it went well and I’ve been healing pretty well. Even with how quick my recovery as been it’s still been a recovery from major surgery. It’s meant not doing a lot of activities, changing sleep schedules, not working out for a few months, and a lot of lingering pain. This process has made me start to wonder how long my disc had been slipping or had broken and I just didn’t notice- it’s very possibly it happened in high school. On the plus side I’ve learned a lot about how to take care of myself and started making even more strides to living healthier.

This coming year will have a lot more scheduling issues with the addition of a horse to the family and new hobbies like wood working. Taking it all one day at a time and working to live by James 4 more:

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”- yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” – James 4:13-15 ESV