2007 in Review

I never plan on doing a year-end retrospective, but seeing lots of other people doing one sometimes puts me in the mood.

This has been a difficult year, mostly in the places where I always have trouble. I've bitten off more than I could chew in a few areas, which means too much stress, and then I drive myself a little crazy. There was a lot of that this year, particularly with large changes at work and quite a while of being short-handed. So, I had three colds this year, a batch of stomach flu, some other minor medical problems, and all the standard signs of being way too stressed.

This Christmas vacation has been good to start helping with that. I've been taking the time as a mental reset, trying to clear my head, rebalance my life, and get back into a good mental spot to tackle the new year. It's a good short-term fix. The next step is to stick with better time management, delegate more, let more things go, and focus on doing exactly what I want to do instead of what I think I should do in my time off.

Some things did go very well this year. Despite a cold and the stress, I loved the trip to Scotland for Debconf. I doubt I'm going to travel internationally again for quite a while, but that was a great experience. Also, looking back on it from the end of the year, I'm fairly happy with my free software contributions. I did a lot of Debian work, particularly on lintian, and released a new version of Policy. There's always more to do, but I did quite a lot.

On social interactions, it was a pretty good year. That's something else that I want to prioritize a little higher, letting more volunteer work go. But it's also something that I want to have flow. I think this will come naturally if I deal with my stress in other ways. But I'm fairly comfortable with how that part of my life is going.

The year was good for reading. I of course spent the year obsessing over how many books I'd read after deciding to not care, but I have a plan for that for the next year. I'll do a year in review later on, after posting the last couple of reviews I wrote, but I think I'm getting a bit better at reviewing and I read more than my new target of books for the year.

I didn't do as well at letting myself take time for other entertainments. Still no DVD catchup, and still not much in the way of playing video games. This is something that I want to improve next year, since I do enjoy it and I think my stress is better if I give myself time to relax.

It was a rough year. But the highlight of the year, and one of the most hopeful signs for next year, is that I have a new manager who is far better than any I've had before and other management changes that have already improved things at work quite a bit. That makes me feel very optimistic; I just have to refocus, relax, be realistic about how much I can accomplish, and give myself time.

Here's to a 2008 with less stress.