I think it says a lot that my last update was January. 2020 has been quite the year, and I don't think I've got an awful lot to add on top of the general conversation. What I want to do, though, is remind myself that it was still a year where I managed to do stuff - managed to build things and learn and achieve.
So much has been going on at home, between the rounds of children learning from home and just trying to keep sane. And all the work-from-home, of course. Getting a good videoconference set-up was like a project in itself. My son moved school this year (to one in central London, even! It seemed like a good idea at the time.), so I had my share of masked school runs. However, I don't really blog family stuff, so let's skip over that.
I accidentally got an MBA. I like MOOCs, and as a techie it's very easy to have a career where you can vaguely see the business in the distance, but never really understand it, so learning more about it all seemed extremely interesting. I got some very polite smart.ly spam on LinkedIn, thought "Why not?" and joined up for this non-accredited online-only Executive MBA course - the official degree status was not important to me, I was just interested in Learning Stuff. A year later, they're now quantic.mba, they received full accreditation, and I have an Executive MBA with Honors. Ooops! :)
I got promoted at work. This one was very much not accidental, being the culmination of years bashing at the system, but I got there. I'm strongly of the opinion that the easiest way to get to a level at Google is to be hired at that level. It was a bright point in a very grinding year of work.
I dealt with my father's death. Not exactly a deliberate project, but something hard that we got through nonetheless. The timing was fortuitous in otherwise bleak circumstances - lockdown lifting meant we could visit him in time and hold a small funeral in person. My sibling was a star in the hospital visits, my wife has done amazing admin work, and family friends really helped us out. Everyone was wonderful in an otherwise difficult time.
I learnt to draw. Ever the book-learning type, I bought a couple of introductory books and started practising. I'm by no means any good, but it's great to pick up something that I feel I have no natural aptitude for, and just... learn a new thing, be bad at it, and that's ok, and just gradually get better. It also made a nice distraction from dealing with my father.
I became a licensed radio amateur (M7FTL). Software-defined radio and the like sounded fun, and a work colleague mentioned the exams had gone online-only, so it seemed a great opportunity to find distraction from the grimness of 2020 in study. Who doesn't love an exam?! I completed my Foundation license and, well, I've not done much with it, but it was a fair amount of fun, and I learnt a bunch.
Last year, I learnt to sail. I was really looking forward to getting better this year, but in the end only got a quick, single session in. It does make me feel a bit better that I have managed to find other things to learn and improve at instead. Screw 2020, and here's to our achievements despite it.
Posted 2020-12-27.