At the beginning of the year, I took the time to put down some
professional goals I wanted to hit
throughout 2008.
Now that December has snuck up on me with the stealth and quickness of a ninja, I thought it would be a
good time to review my progress on those goals, just to see what I wanted to accomplish versus what I
actually accomplished.
Ninja credit
Outlook: not so good.
Goal: Start regular practice sessions. The year started off on the right foot, and ended up better than it was in the middle.
In the middle was a disaster. Practice was not the operative word here - I got plenty of "on the job" practice. I wanted to focus
on the
regular part, outside of work.
Goal: Devote more time to open source software. Here again, the year started off in the right direction. I submitted a couple
of patches to JRuby (I don't know if they were used or not), but quickly found too much work to continue
devoting entire days to established open source projects.
Goal: Do something not useful (and something useful) in Erlang. I installed Erlang and got a simple
program working. Nothing useful, nothing I could consider a success by the standards I hold.
Goal: (Practice in order to) speak at a conference (through user groups). Complete and utter FAIL.
I kept putting "write a presentation to give at XUG" off until "next month when I have more time." Instead
of giving a presentation at a user group, I managed to miss every meeting of every group I'm interested
in. How does that happen?
Goal: Attend a conference (or multiple): Check. I was able to make it to Lone Star Ruby Conference this year,
and it was well worth it.
Goal: Increase earnings. This one had a few subgoals. Releasing a game with my game dev group did not
happen, though we did place in the top 20 of the
Imagine Cup
Game Development Competition. We also had a couple of meetings towards developing another game, but
we let it fizzle out (or else they just didn't invite me back).
The other subgoals wouldn't be classified as successes either, except for getting another regular source of
income. That was a major win, which made the entire goal a win. In fact, I might go so far as to say
I pwned that goal.
Overall, the year looks like a failure if I examine it by the professional goals I set here. It
doesn't feel that way though. Still, I think when I sit down to make my goals for next year, I'll need to
set review dates and time lines for them to keep them closer to achievable.
How did you do in achieving your goals for 2008?
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