Tolkien, Julie & Geege

New year started again Monday. Today is the birthday of J. R. R. Tolkien, my cousin Julie, and Cara's grandmother, who is affectionately nicknamed Geege. The start of the year is often a time to reflect on the successes and failures of the previous year while looking toward this one.

In November I finished my first marathon under 5 hours. It was the 3rd of 3 marathons I ran last year, and training for it took up countless hours that always left me feeling better than before I started. Unfortunately, my running buddy Jacques moved to Seattle before I moved to Norway. I met up with him there last summer when I was in town for my second marathon, but I haven't found a replacement. I've only signed up for the Spitsbergen Marathon in June so far this year, and I'm not sure I'll do more than one marathon. Just finding a race to do every month is challenge enough!

In February I landed a job with Critical Mix that has pushed me to grow both as a developer and as a manager. January 1st the project I'm working on officially split off into's own company, PopResearch, with me as the VP of Engineering. This year I've got to grow the team to one 4 times bigger than any team I've previously managed, and I know it will be a continuing challange to find that talent, help it grow, and retain the awesome guys I've already got.

In July I embarked on the exploration of a new continent, and my first in situ language learning project. I've visited eight European countries this year and had conversations in Norsk, Français, Deutsch, Nederlands and Greek. Admittedly my half of the Dutch conversation was in German, but it was passable nonetheless. On the downside I only made a C in the Norwegian class I took at UiB, but I did miss most of November. In a couple weeks I'm starting the second one, and I'd like to do better.

I snuck in just under the wire in my perennial goal to read 50 books a year. I spent most of the fall mired in Thomas Pynchon's boringly pornographic "Gravity's Rainbow", which I am officially giving up on. Finishing books I set out to read is something I unfortunately still get hung up on. We'll see how I manage in 2018.

I left a strong network of folks in Nashville to move to country where I could count the number of people I knew on one hand. Well, adults. I guess I'd have needed two hands if you count kids too. Five short months later more often than not when I go out in town I see someone I know. Bergen is a smaller town than Nashville though. Still, I haven't really acquired any regular, everyday friends. As I mentioned before, I'm still missing a running buddy. And Cara & I haven't found a couple we're both friends with. I also haven't really met any CS professionals I know by name yet. The language barrier means more in contexts where people are trying to impress eachother. In 2018 I'd like to remedy these deficiencies in my current social network.

Last year I gave my electric guitar to Alora & Brittan's friend Mimi and left my acoustic guitar in storage in Tennessee. I also left behind all my painting supplies. I need to get some artistic expression out this year. Zara taught me to knit a couple nights ago, but I don't think that's going to be it.