How the Year Went

I wrote a post on New Year's Day about things I probably wouldn't do this year. Here's my score card:

• Turn Software Carpentry into a book: nope, didn't get to it (though we did publish our lessons).
• Turn the instructor training course into something other people can read and understand: huh—it actually happened (kind of).
• Finish any of the fiction I've been working on: nope. I tidied up Beneath Coriandel (again), but it still needs major surgery to fix some gaping plot holes before it's worth publishing, and I didn't touch the others.
• Write a textbook: nope.
• Start playing the sax again: nope.

What about the things I did think I'd do?

• Get paid: yup.
• Get the Software Carpentry Foundation on a firm footing: that happened, but the credit belongs to the Steering Committee.
• Get fit: nope.
• Put together a meeting of grassroots "learn to code" organizations targeting under-represented groups: it happened, though in the end I decided not to attend.
• Revise Madica: nope. I feel bad about this—I really wanted to get it ready by Christmas.
• Move to England: part marks, since we're only able to stay for half a year.

Given all that, my goals for 2016 are:

• Travel a lot less.
• Work fewer evenings and weekends.
• Swim and play the sax a couple of times a week (but not at the same time).
• Buy a house. (We're going to rent for a few months after we get back to Toronto, but need to find something longer-term by the end of June.)
• Finish Madica and Beneath Coriandel.
• Train at least half a dozen people to run Software Carpentry instructor training.
• Figure out what my next big project is going to be. I'm going to keep teaching for Software Carpentry, but as I wrote in September, I'd like to build and ship some software at least once more. With luck, I'll find a bunch of scientists in Toronto that I could help part-time.

I'll let you know how it goes...