Goals Heading Into 2022

The last couple years have been a roller coaster for all of us. Stuck in this seemingly endless pandemic, it’s hard to keep track of time. In the last year or so, my family and I moved from the east coast to Michigan. I went through a pretty significant period of indifference toward tech, I changed jobs, and continued to feel pretty indifferent toward tech.

Recently though, I rediscovered my enthusiasm for tech. I rebuilt this website and have been doing a lot of writing in preparation for 2022 and beyond.

More Writing

I’ve had an on again, off again relationship with daily writing for a very long time. When I write journal style to start my day, I tend to have a bit more clarity. I can just brain dump my random thoughts, the items that are stressing me out, ideas, plans for the day, whatever it is. Just the act of getting out of my head is helpful for clearing my head and creating some focus around my day.

I’m on again right now and I’m feeling pretty good about it. I have worked to remove any obstacles and limit available excuses, so even if I just capture a paragraph first thing in the morning to go through the motions, that’s what I’ll do. On the worst days, that’s what happens and I’ve at least done the thing. Typically though, just getting started is enough and most of the time, I have way too much crap floating around in my head, so I just write nonsense until things get a bit more clear.

I’m planning to sticking with this habit through the year to make it really stick. In the course of all this writing, I want to generate content that is valuable to a wider audience (beyond nonsense that helps me clear my head), which brings me to my next goal.

More Publishing!

Something I’ve been terrible about over the years is taking the words that I write and sharing them. I’m working on it. I want to write more useful content and publish it here. So, I’m going to work harder at getting over myself and publishing stuff. I have a long list of things I want to write up. I always have a list. This year, I’m committing to posting articles and notes regularly. I don’t know what that cadence looks like yet. Stay tuned!

Videos on egghead.io

I love teaching, and I thoroughly enjoy recording video lesson for egghead.io. I haven’t published a video in quite some time, and now that I’m not feeling burnt out anymore, I’m going to start putting out videos again. As I write this, I think I have published just shy of 200 videos (it’s actually 191, I just checked). I think that number should be far closer to 400 by now, so I have some work to do 😅.

Sadly, not long after I rebuilt this site, my Mac died. I’d been eyeing a new M1 MBP, and I’ve ordered it, but it’ll be close to 2 months before I have it. I’m working via browser-based tools right now, so screen recording for egghead is going to have to wait a bit. The bright side is, I have plenty of time to prepare lessons for an eventual recording marathon!

Blog Posts From My egghead Content

Of those (almost) 200 videos, I think I’ve maybe written the same material up as an article once… that’s a lot of useful information that is only being shared in one medium through a single channel. This year, as I work on publishing more regular content, I’m going to start taking the egghead lessons that are still relevant and turning them into articles that I’ll post here. That should be a fun trip down memory lane as I revisit videos I’ve published over the last five years.

Looking Toward The Future

I’m looking at 2022 as a year of building habits that will help me consistently deliver valuable content. I’d like to create a positive feedback loop where valuable content leads to opportunities that support my ability to create more useful content.

I’ll get there, but these things don’t happen over night. Rather than starting 2022 off expecting to do all the things, I’m going to focus on strengthening the writing habit, publishing regularly, and getting back into producing egghead videos. Once I’ve built up that muscle memory, I’ll start adding on some of my follow up plans.