It’s time to look back at 2018 and talk about me.
On being a professional
The biggest thing for me personally was finishing my master’s thesis and graduating as a Master of Science. I’m glad it’s finally done. After graduating I continued working at Metosin as a software developer. In autumn, I joined Metosin’s board of directors.
At work, I took more responsibility on project management. It felt meaningful even if it always wasn’t fun. In general, I feel like I’ve made more mistakes lately. I reckon this is a good thing: either my job has become more challenging or I’ve become better at recognizing mistakes. Both mean more learning.
Here are some things I learned from, other than making mistakes:
- Camille Fournier’s book The Manager’s Path helped me to understand how engineering management works.
- The Lead Developer London conference was useful as well.
- Zach Tellman’s Elements of Clojure and John Ousterhout’s A Philosophy of Software Design are good treatises on software design in the small.
On having a life outside work
These were fun:
- I started playing piano again after a decade-long break.
- I made a backpack.
- A year ago I hoped to hike and sail more and do more yoga. My hiking plans fell apart, but I did have a great sailing trip in the summer and practiced yoga almost every week!
Some cool cultural works:
- On Body and Soul was a great, subtle movie.
- N. K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy is solid and topical. Recommended to anyone who reads sci-fi.
What about my plans for 2019?
- I’m planning to level up my thoughtleader game this year, so expect more blog posts. I’m back to a situation where it would be sustainable to consistently blog.
- I’m giving a lightning talk at the :clojureD conference in Berlin in February. If you’re attending, come to say hi! :)
- I hope to give a full-length talk at some other conference later this year. Working on it!
While 2018 was a pretty okay year for me, I know it was a hard year for a lot of people both on the personal and the societal level. Frankly, I’m not feeling optimistic about the politics. It will get worse before it gets better.
Finally, a year ago I wrote this:
I can’t believe it’s 2018 and Juha Sipilä’s cabinet still hasn’t fallen apart.
Unfortunately it’s 2019 and Sipilä’s cabinet still hasn’t fallen apart, but at least the parliamentary elections are coming up in April.