Personal
My family and I are all doing well, with my little one (9 years old) growing up to be an absolute superstar. Both of our poodles are doing great, although a little noisy when I’m in meetings - sigh!
Health-wise, I’m doing good, Crohn’s will always be a part of my life and I started new medication to help subdue the pain.
The biggest curve for me this year though was becoming burnt out. I had not paced myself well and ended up getting burnt out around August/September. This partially came from my not wanting to let anyone down along with delays in projects stacking up. I now know the signs for myself and can hopefully do my best to mitigate this if it ever occurs again!
Work
2022 was an amazing year for me as a freelancer with some big milestones.
I incorporated my business By JAM Ltd, which I expected to be a slightly daunting experience. In hindsight, not much has changed and my accountant (shout out to Martin at Gold Stag Accounts) handles all the behind-the-scenes stuff.
I managed to beat my financial goals within 9 months, which I am more than ecstatic about. It's given me a bit of freedom to pick and choose projects without always worrying about the next piece of work.
With regards to coding languages, I still write a lot of PHP and utilise Craft CMS primarily for websites, with a splash of Statamic CMS. I also still love and use Shopify for any commerce-heavy projects. I'd like to get a project together to utilise the new Shopify Plugin for Craft CMS as it would combine my two favourites.
I, finally, started to put more time into learning react and have built a couple of sites on Next.js, I have very much enjoyed it and would like to work on it more in the future.
I have two primary goals for the next year:
- to create a steady pace rather than have sporadic periods of lots of work and less work. This should help smooth out the year and avoid burnout.
- to take more breaks without feeling selfish or like I'm going to miss something.
Books
I only managed to get through 1 book last year which was Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. It was a great book that I couldn't put down.
During 2023, I wish to read more books and have set a goal of 10 books.
Music
I don't think there have been many stand-out albums for me this year, I've felt it's been a little dry on solid album releases. There is one exception to this though which was Dawn FM by The Weeknd, I had it on repeat for about 2 months, no joke! I'm hoping to go see him this year if everything aligns.
Epilogue
For 2023, I'm hoping I'll continue getting a steady amount of work. I'm also planning to start reselling Lego bricks as a side business with my wife.
I'd like to start making regular content, and may dip my toes into client focused blog posts rather than just developer focused ones.
Hear's to 2023!