A Look Back at 2014

2014 was a good year for me personally (and a pretty terrible year for the world at large). Here’s my personal breakdown, with charts!

Teaching

I taught two sessions (6 months) of Metis’ Ruby on Rails bootcamp.

Teaching was a fantastic opportunity. I love that I can switch from consulting to teaching while staying at thoughtbot. I made some friends and learned a lot - teaching the basics of Rails development is a great way to hammer home the stuff about Rails that you “already know”. Helping the students and answering their questions also taught me a lot (and confirmed that accepts_nested_attributes_for should be removed from Rails). I recommend mentoring - you’ll learn a lot answering random questions, and you’ll feel great about yourself.

Books

I feel like I should have read a few more books…but I read 62 this year, so it can’t have been that bad a year! A few are repeats (like “I, Robot” and “To Kill a Mockingbird”), but I definitely got more out of them this time around, so I’m counting them.

Here they are (WARNING GIANT TABLE AHEAD):

Books read per month

The monthly breakdown is a little skewed since the dates are the dates I purchased the book, not the date I finished it:

Notable books

Here are my favorite books of 2014:

• “The Lies of Locke Lamora” is so good I re-read it twice. Elitist Book Reviews did a better writeup than I can.
• “The Moth” is a collection of stories from The Moth, a storytelling night that’s held in many cities, including Boston. The stories are funny, sad, and true. A cracking good read. Thanks Jesse!
• “Tuf Voyaging” and “Fevre Dream” are excellent novels by George R. R. Martin that don’t have any high fantasy at all. “Tuf Voyaging” is a collection of stories about Haviland Tuf, a loquacious cat-lover who finds an incredibly powerful weapon. If you enjoy dry wit and science fiction, I recommend it.
• The entire Johannes Cabal series is worth reading. He’s a sarcastic necromancer who hates people and sometimes makes bets with the Devil. Come on.

Lifting

Here’s my lifting progression; the rep ranges vary so they’re not directly comparable.

I fucked around on lifting during the first half of the year, then really buckled down on the second half. I finally stopped running Starting Strength because I keep hitting plateaus and switched to Madcow. Using the Madcow spreadsheet gave me actionable goals to look forward to and really helped.

My squat has improved a lot - I have a note next to the “200x3x5” in January that says “HARD”. I have a note next to 195x2x5 in December that says “Easy. Good form.” Plus I added 65 pounds to it! It’s not great, but it’s going up and feels like it’s on a good track.

My OHP is progressing well. It’s hard to compare 85x3x5 and 120x5, but I’m confident I’ll hit 1 plate soonish and that’s a great milestone.

My bench is also going well - I could probably do 190x3 or even 200x3, but I’m staying on the program.

My deadlift feels totally stuck, especially since my squat is getting close to it, and I don’t know why. My legs are probably fine, since I can squat 265, so I suspect it’s my core and back. Madcow added some back work (rows, back extension), but I’m not sure it’s enough. My form might be totally fucked up. I’ll find out soon.

Writing

I was the #1 blogger at thoughtbot this year, with the most blog posts (11) and the most-viewed blog post (50k views). I also copy-edited, oh, let’s say, ALL of the other blog posts on the thoughtbot blog. Here’s hoping I can continue the streak next year.

Programming

I started getting into Haskell this year. I really like it. Hopefully next year I’ll have some more projects to show, but here are the ones I like from this year:

• UPenn’s CIS194 class is posted online, so I decided to follow their curriculum.
• We published our Haskell trail on Upcase, and I did every exercise. It’s the single biggest factor in my Haskell development this year.

Wrapping Up

This was an excellent year for me. I got stronger, I changed some lives, I read and I wrote. Here’s to a kickass 2015!