Blog entries tagged Retrospective

Big ups. Big downs. Took some risks. Continued to go with the flow... Thinking. Learning. Growing.

The year ended with the heartbreaking loss of our "nephew," Elias... which is part of the reason its taken so long to write this retrospective. He was an incredibly special kid with an incomprehensible diagnosis that he and his family fought as hard as possible to overcome... The loss has taken a while to settle in.

Last year, my first boss and one of my classmates were also taken too early by cancer.

2025 was unkind but kept moving.

Work

The year started off strong at Panther, the cybersecurity startup I was working at. Then it took an unexpected turn when I got a call from my former Venmo leader and friend, Papanii. Shortly after, I …

I've been dealing with some minor, intermittent skin issues for years. It's been treatable, but last year the eczema came hard, spread further and was a little gnarlier... so I started seeing a dermatologist and allergist. They tested for chemical allergies, environmental allergies, had me change everything that I put on my skin or clothes and none of it helped. I suspected a food allergy or something, but the allergist disagreed, and wanted me to come in weekly to get shots. Yeah right.

Despite everything else they suggested, things got worse toward the end of the year... peak gluttony season.

In December, we did an "advent calendar of beer" from Confluence, so I was having at least half of a craft beer every day for nearly a month - …

You know those Christmas cards that folks send that include a little 1-pager about what they've been up to for the year? I really like those... So, here's my 1-pager for 2024.

Travel

I stuck around North America again this year, visiting...

• San Francisco to hang with my team @ Panther
• Montana to snowboard and kick it with Kirps, Mason, and Ryan
• Moab for the Bronco Off-Roadeo and national parks
• Arizona for some golf, baseball, and hangs with Kari's folks
• Chicagoland to hang with family
• Oregon to visit Kari's brother, Victor
• Chicago to run around with our friends, Trent and Maurizio
• Canada for some fishing with family.
• Cornell for Kari's 20-year reunion.
• Minnesota to camp and celebrate Kari's birthday at August Schell's Oktoberfest

... but I’m …

2023 was a strange year. It felt gluttonous and hard to catch up, but it was always gonna be tough to follow the year of free boi summer.

We had lots of good stateside travel, a couple annoying financial issues, and I accidentally bought a Bronco.

We hosted fewer events and I made a conscious decision to only hang with folks who also invite us to things. This turned into spending time with new sets of great people but also seeing old buddies less than I'd hoped.

Travel

We didn't get to leave the country, but did take lots of road trips and I got to see 20 states.

• I went to Florida to visit my buddy, Kevi
• Minnesota for Bock Fest, Beyoncé, and Oktoberfest.
• Took a road trip to visit Kari's parents in Arizona, which also allowed us to see …

I almost didn't write a year-end blog because I kinda captured the year already, but ... 5 weeks late, I just wanna say that 2022 was one of the best years that I've had in a while.

Most things have already been shared on my yearly stats page and blogs:

• I quit my job
• I got a hole-in-one
• I took 6 months off

Oh, and we got a dog.

But, I ultimately focused on myself and leisure and felt more alive than I have in a long time.

I realize that I'm incredibly fortunate to have had those opportunities, but I'm now back to work, where I'm learning a ton and that's exciting.

I've started getting out to my coworking space more often and have def missed that change of scenery.

I'm spending less energy on internet friendships and relationships that …

2021 was the year that was supposed to be normal again.

I really thought that we would get together and beat this pandemic, but nope. 2021 was somehow worse than 2020, at least for me.

The disappointment was real.

The depression was real.

The loneliness was real.

...

I was born and raised in the middle of nowhere and have always been sort of a lone-wolf nerd with close friends that were few and far between.

In elementary school, one of my best buddies died in an accident. I found another best friend in junior high, a couple more in high school, some in college, and a few more after... but with the past couple years of this pandemic coming after several years of working remotely, having most of my best friends living across the country, …

I’m 40 now. Almost dead.

So, as I approach my final years (RIP), I’ve been reflecting a lot on the past decade and what I want going forward.

On my 30th birthday, I moved to Chicago to kick off a new, stressful, and fruitful trajectory in my life and career.

In that decade, I took some risks, took advantage of some big opportunities, worked hard, had some big wins, lucked out, and burned out.

On paper, our net worth quickly went from negative to a couple milli. We got a new house. New cars. Traveled a lot. It felt like success. Not quite "made it" success, but definitely success..

After buying the house, we immediately started remodeling it, which turned into the biggest set of personal construction projects that I've undertaken. It was …

My goals for 2020 were to:

• learn how to relax
• tinker on some smaller car/tech/house projects
• lose that new fat
• ride that bike

Covid really helped me nail three of those, hah. But with nowhere to go, I didn’t get on the bike nearly as often as I wanted.

So first of all, Kari and I were incredibly fortunate to have steady work, income, and a spacious home and yard during this pandemic. I absolutely feel for everyone that had their pay scaled back or eliminated, or were cooped up in apartments or city spaces without being able to fully enjoy their local amenities.

The only way that I knew how to stay sane in isolation was to be outside and stay as busy as possible on projects, so I started the pandemic with a lot of yard work and small house …

A few weeks into 2020 and I’m still not sure how I feel about 2019. The entire year felt like remodeling and travel... which turned out to be a lot less chill and a lot less healthy than I had hoped for.

House

I started small by tiling a window ledge in my office.

Then, I remodeled the entire basement (with a little help on the plumbing, flooring, tile, and drywall). I replaced (and finished) every door, piece of trim, plumbing fixture, light fixture, switch, cabinet, and repainted every square inch. We also upgraded a lot of furniture in the process. The whole thing took much longer than I'd planned, but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out and am really happy that it's done.

I also remodeled the garage... Removed some bulky cabinets, …

I really, really want to bring this suuuuper dated website up-to-date, but I've been so focused on things outside of technology that I haven't devoted any time to broox dot com.

Let's fix that... at least for one blog post.. and talk about last year.

2018 felt incredibly productive.

It started with some fun travel and ended with me literally canceling all travel for the last 4 months and just hangin at home. I got a new job. I built a lot. It was awesome. It was all awesome.

Work

I moved from a Commerce team at PayPal to the Commerce Team at Venmo, which has been much more my speed. They brought me out to Colorado and New York a couple times, which were nice trips, but the best part is: I'm building rad, heavily used stuff with amazing …

At the end of the year, I always try to write a little retrospective blog that highlights all the awesome things that happened. It's one of the few times that I actually take the time to write on this weird little site anymore.

But, I didn't do that retrospective for one of the seemingly raddest and most successful years of my life: 2016.

It took a while, but I eventually realized that despite the rad experiences, I didn't write about 2016 because I was generally unhappy. Over the past couple years, I've been stuck in my head. Overly critical, anxious and destroying myself with perfectionism, etc.

I was straight depressed.

In 2017, I came to terms with that and took a step back to work on fixing things. Through that process, I've been …

Three weeks into 2016 and I've finally taken a second to think about last year. A year I visited both coasts, sang for a couple thousand people, celebrated 10 years with Kari, sold a company I helped build, and bought a new house.

2015 really was an amazing year.

I travelled to Minnesota for beer, California for meetings, Maine for lobster, Boston for fun, Mayakoba for an amazing wedding, Madison for Shenanigans, the wilderness for disconnecting, and of course a dozen trips to Chicago (for both work and play).

The big thing, though, which I haven't really talked much about is the sale of our company, Modest...

My friends, Harper, Dylan, Clint and I built a product and a team that an incredibly successful and seasoned vet in the industry …

So, my friend Carol has this theory that you truly begin your middle aged life once you become thirty three and a third. She's based this on the idea that if we live to be ~100 years old (yea right), the first third of your life is from 0 to 33.3 years old, the second (middle) third is until you're 66.6 years old, and so on...

She totally buys into this thing too. Like she'll even make you a 33.3, middle aged narwhal birthday cake if you're lucky like my buddy, Nick.

So anyway, with that said, Carol tells me that today marks my 33.3 year old birthday... and by her standards, I'm now officially middle aged.

And to be honest, even without this incredibly important milestone, I've been thinking about this a lot lately.

Over the past few …

2013 was a roller coaster of a year for me. A roller coaster with some serious business highs, lows, and hardly anything in between.

A few of the key happenings were...

• went to a presidential inauguration and some inaugural balls! ... (heh, inaugural balls)
• figured out wtf I ... well, we (me, Harper, Dylan, and Clint) were going to do for a job
• started building a company (and a product!)
• paid off my education
• bought a new car
• dealt with some surprise homeownership woes
• got away from everything via the BWCA
• helped my wife battle her new M.S. diagnosis
• got stressed out
• became comfortable

There was also a lot of awesome travel, weddings, concerts, festivals, friends, a huge tattoo, these stats, and other things I could talk about... But really, all …

The year that I…

• brought in at Chicago house parties with Kari, Drea, and friends.
• mostly spent living in Chicago, apart from visiting my wife and working my ass off.
• learned to scratch records (sort of).
• watched my uncle get inducted into the Iowa Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
• met the President of the United States.
• watched Kari learn that the biopsied lymphnodes in her neck were not cancerous.
• spent Saint Patrick's Day with friends on the green Chicago River.
• learned to make umeboshi onigiri.
• attended a good friend's lesbian wedding at a dude ranch.
• visited Minnesota, Washington DC, Arizona, Indiana, Marion, Des Moines, and Lake Okoboji.
• watched a Chicago Cubs game from a rooftop.
• went to the Chicago Blues Fest, 80/35, and Lollapalooza.
• saw the Lichte…

I moved to Chicago for 466 days, where I lived in 3 different neighborhoods and visited 375 different places — 239 of which were restaurants or bars. I walked around 10,087 steps (or 7.67 miles) per day, slept roughly 7.19 hours per night, and gained 1 pound before returning to Iowa.

I was actually in the city on 400 of those days and ventured out of Chicago on 117 of them. 68 of those (spread across 17 different trips) were spent in my actual home, with my wife in Iowa. I was also fortunate enough to get out to Washington DC, San Francisco, Arizona, and Napa Valley.

I spent 302 days at Obama's campaign headquarters, where as an engineer I committed over 140,000 lines of code written in 6 languages to 19 applications across 1,675 commits. …

Ah, 2011. A year that was brought in while wearing tie dye tighty whities at a house party in Des Moines, and finished at a freshly painted warehouse party in Chicago.

It was quite a roller coaster year with my new job, huge culture shifts, and a long distance relationship with that amazing wife of mine.

There's sooo much to talk about, but I'm gonna try to keep this short and list style.

So, other than my new job and the move to Chicago...

• I finished sleeving my left arm
• Bought a bike
• Learned how to "cook" raw food
• Had to cut down part of a tree I planted
• brewed a lot of beer
• Turned 30
• Made a whole lot of new friends

I also traveled a bit. Here are some of the places I visited...

• Minnesota for Bock Fest and a death defying canoe …

So a couple weeks ago I put together a timeline of my 2010 with plans of writing a year end blog... so now that you've forgotten about everyone else's 2010 retrospectives, here's 1 more.

Every time I write these I start out thinking, "man, I didn't really do a whole lot last year," but after looking back through photos, blogs, and tweets... I'm quite happy with last year. I traveled a lot, saw a lot, became a bit healthier, and progressed professionally. All awesome things.

So 2010 in a nutshell...

Work...
At the start of the year, I began doing some contract work at Dipity, a San Francisco based timeline tool startup. After about 5 months of contracting, I decided I really liked working with the folks at Dipity so I left Red 5 …

2009 was the first year that I visited both the east and west coasts... And actually, I also touched the northern border and was only 30 miles from the southern border. I know I'm a geo dork, but I think that's pretty rad... and while we're on the subject, I'll just go ahead keep gauging the success of last year based on travel... so here we go.

We started and ended the year in Iowa City. Visited Arizona, Harper's Ferry, NYC and New Jersey, and Long Beach and LA.

Made several stops in...
Minnesota for Bock Fest and my first Boundary Waters trip.
The Cedar Rapids Area for Lindsey and Stevee's Birthday, Wall Paneling, Mother's Day, Flooring, Kayaking, Cornell Homecoming, Cigars, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.
Chicago for Joyce's …

Well, 2008 seemed to suck pretty bad for a lot of people. The economy, floods, etc. It was a rough time. I gotta say though, aside from gas prices, 401k losses, and a missed job opportunity, mine was pretty damn good. And our new year's eve celebration also bounced back to being good this year.

See, the last 2 NYEs have sucked pretty bad. We stuck around Des Moines, hoped for random craziness (like we'd gotten in Chicago the 2 years before that) and instead got relaxed, uneventful nights. I don't think NYE is supposed to be relaxed. It's supposed to be a celebration. Celebrate the good things that happened the past year, and also celebrate in hopes of an even better year. To me, celebrations of that scale, should be crazy, …