March marks the passing of a personal milestone: four years of working for myself.  So this is the point where you make jokes about my boss being a jerk or the fact that no one else would hire me.  S’ok, I don’t mind.  It’s why I’m here.

This past year was crazy.  By design really.  I didn’t end up doing all the things I planned to do, but hey, “the best laid plans …” and so forth.  Besides, being able to pivot as I see fit is one of the first reasons I’m independent, and I am pretty happy with the way things have turned out. 

Here are some of the highlights from the past year:

• I’ve pushed six new highly-targeted open source projects.  And there are more coming in the next year, spanning automation and discovery frameworks for business intelligence to some nifty shell-aware data visualization tools.
• I’ve released several major revisions to StudioShell, including support for Visual Studio 2013, a version specifically designed for the Nuget package manager console, along with an example of how to use it in your own Nuget packages.  So, you know, go on and use it.
• I’ve published two new Pluralsight courses (log4net and PowerShell Gotchas!) which, if I do say so myself, are very well done.  In addition I have another course in the works which should be out in the next month or two on publishing custom performance counters in your applications. And it too is very well done :)
• I’ve learned more about scaling application data layers and SQL server than I really ever cared to.  Still, it’s been an interesting and view-shifting journey, which I always enjoy.
• I’ve expanded my speaking horizons with soft-skills, architecture, devops, and of course software development talks.  Moreover, I hope the coming year will find me speaking to new, larger, and wider audiences as well – for instance I’ll be presenting three sessions at the upcoming PowerShell Summit in Redmond next month.
• I’ve started fiction writing again.  I don’t do it very well or very often, but I’m learning to enjoy doing it poorly and infrequently.
• I opened up about a dark part of my life; not for commentary, not for attention, but out of gratitude to those who support me and concern for those looking for their own support.
• I’ve learned a new instrument – the ukulele.  I love it – it is impossible to be angry or stressed while playing a uke.  And it seems to please the right people and annoy the crap out of the others.  So you know, win-win.
• I’ve crocheted four baby blankets, one massive ugly afghan, and countless hats and scarves.  Currently working on baby blanket number five; seriously, y’all need to stop making them babies.

Of course it’s not all rainbows and unicorns.  I know there are things I need shore up and put real focus on.  Businessish things.  And I’m working on it.  Seriously, shut up about it.

At this point I would make some statements about what I plan to do in the coming year.  Outside of what I’ve already mentioned, I’m not doing that this time.  Instead, let’s just say I’m heading where I need to go at the pace I need to travel. 

Which is, after all the point of all this responsibility and effort right?