Rebooting my Mission

Eyes on the prize, reboot the mission

I've lost the sight, but not the vision

Eyes on the prize, reboot the mission

I lost the sight, but not the vision

- The Wallflowers Reboot the Mission

Ah it is finally 2014. After a long and hard year it is time to turn the page on a new one. This song off of The Wallflowers' new album was rattling around in my head when I woke up today and it encapsulates what I want 2014 to be. In order to do that though, I need to own up to the things that I did not accomplish in 2013. Where I lost my sight.

Personally 2013 was a roller coaster. I started off Jan 1 with a neck spasm so that should have been my clue that things were going to be "fun". Shortly there after my wife had a major set back with her knee recovery and was in a lot of pain. On a positive note we got to spend a very restorative week on vacation, our first real one in two years. I also got to go back home for an awesome football game that served as another mini-vacation for me.

Work-wise, while things were stressful at times, it was a pretty good year. I got to go to PyCon again, expanded my knowledge of SQLAlchemy, drank a gallon of AngularJS Kool-Aid(and yes I still like it), and started learning about GIS with PostGIS. The highlight of the year for me had to be our at work hackathon. I pitched the idea to have us get away from the project grind for a couple days. While my own project that day was a bit of a miss, the way the team was so enthusiastic about it and got so much out of it made me feel awesome.

On the side-project front, it is hard to find much positive. The first half of the year I spent trying to learn more and more about healthcare and a way to make my vision a reality. Mentally I took the summer off, so that was not a total waste. August was huge though. August was when I started to dip my toes into the startup waters and pitch my ideas and get feedback. While it was brutal at times, it was also incredibly valuable and helped me focus on how I want to start the project. I guess why I feel like things were so terrible is that I lost the momentum I gained during that time. Stressed ramped up and I could not fit in time to work on it and it was terribly frustrating. The positive take away was that I was able to let myself give up for a little while. It sounds terrible, I know, but at this stage, doing it totally on my own, I needed to give myself permission to walk away. Without that my work and my personal life would have suffered even more than they already had.

Ok, now that the dreary recap is over, what about am I going to do with this new year. You know some people hate resolutions or think that they are a load of bull however I love them. There is something about looking at the year ahead with dreams and hope that helps give me perspective. For my resolutions this year I am going to try a little different approach. In business and organizations there is a concept of a Moon Shot or a Big Hairy Audacious Goal. The idea is to set a grand overarching goal that will shape the rest of your goals and decisions. What is forgotten when setting these big goals is that, even if the larger goal is not accomplished, striving for it should cause improvement. 

So, without further ado, here is my BHAG for 2014: 

I want to launch an alpha version of my healthcare app by June 2014. 

To make this happen, without driving myself insane, I am not going to commit to it being perfect or successful, just that it is out there.

To help ensure success here are some of my supporting resolutions:

1. Blog, once a week, about the process. It could be an emotional brain dump like this, it could be tech related, whatever, but I need to express what the progress is. I think it will help with perspective.

2. Set aside about one hour a week to assess the previous week and look toward the week ahead. I guess I want to treat my life like a status meeting. Oh and store it in Evernote to keep track of it all.

3. Workout and do my PT exercises. It will be really hard to do what I want if my body falls apart.

So there you have it. I may have lost sight of a lot of things and of the path I want to be on in 2013 but I never forgot my vision. This year it is time to make the vision a reality!