At the end of every year, I find myself looking back going “wow that was over fast, what on earth did I do with all that time, aargh!”

Thus in the spirit of one of my favourite articles, Always Improve, Never Stop, Never Pause, Never Appreciate, here’s some of what I did in 2016. Not necessarily “achievements”, not necessarily endorsements, but things I did that made me happy.

So, in no particular order:

I proposed. She said yes. We bought a house.

I shipped 28 blog posts. Still not as many as I’d like, but I’ve always struggled with over-editing to the point where I never finish, so this marks progress.

I helped run a conference, as treasurer of PyCon UK 2016.

I contributed to the BeeWare project and received a challenge coin.

My first ever Debian contribution, an apt-get UX “bug” (improvement? patch?) #709092, was resolved. Massive thanks to David Kalnischkies and Chris Lamb.

I baked my first pie, I captained a starship (seriously, this was so much fun), and I cracked The Crystal Maze (thanks Giles!)

I made it to a bunch of excellent events:

• PipelineConf
• Monkigras
• Django Under The Hood
• ScaleSummit
• NHS Hack Day London 2016
• EMFCamp - because if I’m going camping, I want gigabit connectivity from my tent…

I don’t have a complete list of books I read, as my GoodReads account was mostly untouched for 2016 (though I plan to use it more in 2017) but my Kindle/Amazon data let me reconstruct a partial list (at least of the fiction; I generally prefer physical books for non-fiction). I read some great books though:

• The Liveship Traders trilogy
• The Bobby Dollar series
• The Nightmare Stacks - the latest in Stross’s Laundry Files series
• Turn The Ship Around - possibly my favourite leadership book
• Start With Why
• The Merchant Princes series
• Harry Potter and the Cursed Child
• American Gods
• Ready Player One - they’re making a film of this and I can’t wait!
• The Rapture Of The Nerds
• Wireless: The Essential Charles Stross
• Dune - I’d seen the film years ago, was good to finally read the book
• Axiomatic - thanks to Curtis Maloney for the recommendation
• Permutation City

I saw some fantastic theatre:

• Peter Pan Goes Wrong - panto comedy disaster
• Guys and Dolls
• The Phantom of the Opera - we’re John Owen Jones fans and couldn’t miss the opportunity to see him back as the Phantom (he was the longest-running Phantom, with over 2000 performances)
• Phantom again, this time with Ben Forster
• Miss Saigon’s closing night
• Adam Kay’s The Remains of Tom Lehrer
• The Comedy About A Bank Robbery
• The Truth
• The Bodyguard - I hadn’t realised just how much of Whitney Houston’s music I knew and enjoyed
• Groundhog Day
• Jesus Christ Superstar at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre
• Les Misérables - John Owen Jones closing it on Broadway
• The Hired Man - John Owen Jones at Cadogan Hall
• Stomp - absolutely amazing performance
• Travesties - I love Stoppard and I love Travesties, one of the first shows I saw as an undergrad
• The Play That Goes Wrong - I laughed so hard I thought I might rupture something
• The Phantom of the Opera 30th Anniversary
• Murder Ballad
• Half a Sixpence
• Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - I read the script; seeing it on stage was fantastic - some incredibly impressive special effects!

So?

Putting this list together has helped me remember and appreciate bits of 2016 that were good for me. I recommend giving it a try yourself.