It's late January. I'm starting to write this article on the 24th.
But I haven't only started thinking about it. I've had thoughts kicking around about successes in 2024. I didn't really start outlining them until about a week ago. But in general, I was feeling pretty good about where this review was heading. I think I learned some things, and I grew—it wasn't all wins, but overall I think I had a successful year personally.
And then I opened my blog's repo to start writing, and I read the conclusion of last year's review post:
First and foremost, by the time I write my 2024 review post, I'm hopeful to have some resolution to my career stuck-ness. I don't really have an idea of what that means yet. But I don't want to spend another year feeling like I'm not moving forward.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha as my uncle Dan would say in this strangely southern yet Wisconsin drawl, "well, shit." I did not meet that goal. I made very little progress on that goal. In fact, I had planned almost exactly that wording for my conclusion this year. I spent another year of my career feeling like I wasn't moving forward.
Blech. Let's get started, and see where this goes.
One quick note, and this is for me as much as you—as I write this, I'm struggling to distinguish my feelings in December 2024 versus January 2025. The general vibe has changed very quickly this year already. I'm doing my best to separate them not only for this article, but also my well-being. 😬
1. Work: Not great.
TL;DR Verdict: I feel good about what I accomplished in 2024; I don't feel good about feeling stuck for a second consecutive year.
My 2024 self-evaluation at Camunda was very positive! I collaborated, stepped up, mentored, and made impact. I "focused on growing roses instead of only clipping thorns"—a distinction I make in developer experience between building delights for users, and eliminating friction.
I did struggle with getting "my" things done sometimes. My job is not completely but very much a "support" role. I spend a lot of time trying to not be a blocker on others moving their work forward.
The problem with work...is that I still feel stuck career-wise. I have a lot of feelings about my current role; I am not comfortable putting many of them in writing. I have been able to focus on work that I find enjoyable and impactful, and ignore my frustrations. I might be burying some feelings instead of addressing them. This is obviously not a great approach long-term.
I spoke to two career counselors in 2024. In both cases, we agreed that I should be doing something different than what I'm currently doing. But I never figured out what that thing should be. I thought I did, and I tried a couple things, and I considered others pretty deeply. But nothing jumped out to me as the thing I should be doing next. I'm nervous to do more exploration of this subject, because I don't want to start a new career, and I'm afraid that's what I'd find out.
Looking ahead
In one year, one of two things will be true:
- I will be doing something very different than what I'm doing right now.
- I will be doing the same thing, but I will have become more comfortable with not pouring my identity into my day job. I will be channeling energy into non-day-job work and activities.
2. Non-work development: A+++++
TL;DR Verdict: This is my most interesting and productive year ever in regards to non-work development.
I had a fantastic 2024 in this area. I'm really proud of the number of non-day-job projects I worked on this year. There was a broad variety, too:
- I learned Elixir. And I discovered that it completely aligns with how I want to write code. I would love to write more Elixir.
- I directed that excitement into ready set go, a multi-player app for tracking and spectating athletes competing in a triathlon. I borrowed a couple friends to help me time an actual race during the Camunda retreat. I owe the world at least one article about this experience. I've never built a fully functional, rock-solid app so quickly.
- On 2 Rad Dads, we worked on two very different projects. For most of the year, we scratched Jon's itch to learn things about Playdate development. In the fall, we switched to a new project: a Raycast wormhole extension, for entering shortcodes that expand to specific URLs.
- As an experiment to find out if independent consulting is for me (it isn't), I spun up an LLC named Brilliant Supernova. Under this name, I began building a React-based design system for my friend Jay and his company. The project is still in progress.
Looking ahead
Jon and I will be wrapping up Goto soon. I still have a good amount of work to do for the design system; I'm undecided on whether I'd pick up more side work after that. I have lots of ideas for projects in my head, and I hope to continue harnessing my excitement for them.
3. Content: Yiiiikes.
TL;DR Verdict: Very little to show, but good, actually. A rebirth. A shift in how I think about content.
Okay, first the highlights:
I did stream a bunch. With the exception of a summer break, Jon and I streamed consistently the entire year. No one really watched it....but we worked on two neat projects that I already mentioned ☝.
From there, it's downhill.
I presented at only two events. In April, at Write The Docs, I turned my Camunda docs SEO story into one last format—a conference presentation. I poured a ton of effort into preparing, including hand-painting illustrations for all slides. I felt like I crushed it, but it seemed to land very poorly and I got barely any interaction from it. In the end it was a disappointing experience, considering the massive effort I put in and the little I got out.
I gave that same talk a second time in the summer, at the final That Conference in its current form. RIP. This is a different type of sad outcome.
My blog was very quiet. I wrote a whopping two blog posts! And one of those was a year in review. The other was a reference article for my SEO talk.
I wrote down many ideas for articles....but I never found myself wanting to turn one of those ideas into an article. I think a lot of it is the bar for entry. A full blog post takes a lot of time and effort.
But also, as I mentioned in my previous review, I was already burned out on writing coming into 2024. My Write the Docs experience compounded this. I poured so much into that talk, with almost zero in return. I was already broken; somehow I broke even further.
Looking ahead
The streaming will continue. There will be more 2 Rad Dads. We also expanded the channel to include some other friends, and piloted our first Dev Show & Tell.
To alleviate my writing problem, I recently spun up a digital garden called Sprouts. This contains more note-like posts, it's regularly updated, and it lowers the bar for me to actually write things.
Finally, I think I've almost fully shifted to a mindset of creating content for myself, rather than doing it to help someone else. Don't get me wrong, I really really like to help people. But to focus on what I can control, I see content as something for me first, and I think that's a good thing.
4. Sports: "Yay," then "uh oh."
TL;DR Verdict: Some great, and some very bad. I crushed it until September. Then I broke myself and I don't know how to get it back. I am genuinely concerned that 2024 sent me on a negative trajectory physically.
In September, I did my second Ironman 70.3 this year, in Madison, Wisconsin. It went really well. I crushed the training, checking almost all boxes for planned workouts over a 20 week period. I did get sick of long bike rides by the end of the training...which would come to haunt me.
A week after the Ironman 70.3, I did a Ragnar trail run relay. It was my favorite sporting event I've ever done! I really hope I get invited back to this team.
I loved the camp, the team effort, the environment & the athlete village, ...but above all, trail running in the middle of the night. Every athlete on the team runs three loops at different times—one small, one medium, and one long. I asked to swap positions with someone, so that I was running my long shift on the hardest loop in the middle of the night. If I was going to run trail in the middle of the night, I wanted to run trail in the middle of the night. I'm very happy with this decision. I got shivers multiple times from the joy I felt. It was honestly a spiritual experience in the woods by myself in the dark.
After one more Olympic distance triathlon the following weekend, I burned out. And I got sick...possibly COVID.
I did not ride my bike for the last nearly two months of the year. This is a first. I still don't have the urge to get on my bike! My annual distance for the year was significantly lower than each of the last 5 years.
My current exercise schedule includes: running 2x a week usually at a relatively comfortable pace, climbing 2x a week, lifting 2x a week, and swimming 1x a week, basically since October. These are all very enjoyable things for me, but none of them are exactly setting the world on fire. Or at least, not at the effort with which I'm putting out.
After my body crashed from the back to back to back races, my heart rate became totally unpredictable for the remainder of the year. I just didn't have the energy for a workout very often. I had tested negative for COVID when I was sick, but the lethargy and weird heart rate that I felt for months afterward convinced me that I probably had COVID.
Looking ahead
I'm worried that I won't find the urge to train hard again. The tiredness is mostly gone. The inability to crush it is not.
Next year I'm not planning to do a single triathlon. I will cycle only for fun, and probably only once it warms up enough to ride outside.
I am planning to focus on trail running this year. Before winter, that was the activity I found most enjoyable. I want to run at least a couple trail half marathons, and a couple road halves (including one in Boise, while visiting my college roommate).
5. Socials: 😕
Strange that this gets its own category, but it does because it's in such a strange place. I'm not really posting much anywhere; Bluesky more than anything else, but not even much there.
At this point, Bluesky and LinkedIn are the only social media networks I feel comfortable contributing to. I can't predict if/how this will change in the next year.
One frustrating effect of me feeling ready to abandon most platforms: it's getting hard to keep track of what I've done in the past year. I usually look at posts from the past year to guide this article. This year, I didn't find much to go on.
6. Art: Hell yeah.
TL;DR Verdict: Really fantastic. I did a lot of fun and interesting projects.
Let's end on a positive. At the end of 2024, I felt better about my art practice than I have since 2020.
I pumped out a ton of illustrations in in the beginning part of the year, for the talk I gave in April. I rather intentionally used this as a forcing function to make art, and that seemed to work.
I made art at a snail's pace in the middle of the year, but that's pretty normal for that time of year. Painting a pair of cycling shoes took me months, but the wait was totally worth it:
Once we hit fall, I started crushing it until the end of the year. In hindsight I realize I was perhaps getting bored of watercolors. Instead, I became obsessed with linocut prints. I dove into linoleum prints head first. I spent the last two months of the year working on lino projects regularly. I spent the last month of the year working on them constantly—every moment of down time, if I wasn't working on an art project, I was thinking about an art project.
Not only do I have a cool kids keyboard, I also now have the coolest kids keymap cheat sheets next to it, for when I forget where the backslash key is seventeen times a day 😍
(And also a dedicated em-dash key 💪💪💪 but that is a different conversation.)
— Steven Hicks (@pepopowitz.bsky.social) December 31, 2024 at 5:47 PM
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Looking ahead
So far this year I've stepped back a bit, finding a little less time for art projects. But also I'm not specifically in the "carve" stage of a project right now, and that is my favorite part. Tiny movements, deep focus, very slow process—it's an absolutely perfect medium for my brain. Once I can get my project pipeline back there, I expect to bury myself in art projects again.
I still have a ton to learn and experiment with, and a ton of projects in my mind. It's going to be another strong year.
Summarizing my year ahead
Distilling my words above into a couple focuses for 2025, this is what I've got:
-
Do things for me
- Keep the momentum on art, streaming, and non-work development
- With a lower bar of entry for writing, cultivate my digital garden.
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Figure things out
- What sport will I love this year? 🤷♂️
- Please please please figure out what I'm doing with my career. Or become happy with scratching itches outside of work.
All of that seems attainable, and all of it seems important.