The year 2014 was exciting and challenging for me. This yearly post provides a short horn-trumpeting summary of it. In no particular order:

• Lost more than 2kg. That might seem like peanuts compared to last year. But I also avoided the trap of regaining weight after a diet, thanks to good habits. Never imagined I’ll be regularly eating salad for breakfast. I think that creating habits is more important than undertaking objectives. No matter if it’s personal life, family, team or organisation.

• Continued going on morning (sometimes evening) runs. Want to run half a marathon this year. I’ve also mixed in some other workouts, especially during the wintertime. 42 push-ups is the answer to life, universe and everything.

• Got paid for speaking in front of people. Yes, I’m still an introverted software developer. And no, that wasn’t a goal I had. Either way, achievement unlocked. Can I put “professional speaker” on my resume right now?

• Read dozens of memorable books. It’s hard to pick just one, so I’ll recommend three: Thinking in Systems, The Power of Habit and On Writing Well.

• As intended, I shifted from singular focus on Ruby and tried to again broaden my horizons. I tried out various new programming languages like Elixir, Rust and Go. Attended LinuxCon Europe and Redis Developer Meetup. Refocused on skills that will never become stale, including trying to figure out my own psychology. Thanks for people that continue to give me occassional gentle pushes in the right direction.

• Continued contributing to open-source. Didn’t start any new projects that gained a ton of traction, but made Pronto even better. Apparently, there are people in Japan that use it. There are even slides to prove it! Never thought I’ll be able to say that.

Let’s see what I can make of 2015.