For a while now I've had a tradition here where I end my "blog year" with a wrap up post looking back at how the year went and figuring out what I want for the upcoming year. This is, honestly, a post just for myself, but as usual, I'm always open to what people think, so feel free to leave me a comment below.

Career and Conferences

This year marked my (nearly) fourth year at Adobe, but as I said earlier, my time has ended. While I'm not happy with the timing, I have to be honest with myself and say it was time to move on. I am incredibly proud of what I accomplished at Adobe. I grew quite a bit as a developer evangelist/advocate, and I can look at what I did for the Acrobat Services team with a great sense of pride. However, I had been trying to increase my impact and help other organizations within Adobe, and had run into somewhat of a brick wall. I love my role and can't wait for the next role so I can continue to grow.

This year I gave 17 presentations, 12 virtual and 5 in person. For a while I was tracking all my CFP submissions, acceptances, and rejections, but honestly, it got too depressing. I had numerous rejections. But from what I hear, so did most of my colleagues, so I'm trying hard to not be negative about it. I did stop with the tracking (it was grunt work I didn't enjoy), but also try to keep in mind what topics seem to get the strong positive reactions. It should come as no surprise that the AI topics are hot as heck right now.

Currently, I've gotten one rejection and one acceptance for 2025. I'm probably not going to submit as much until I can nail down my next role. That being said, I'm always open to being asked to speak, so if you've got an event, and can handle travel if it's in person, just ask!

Writing

Without a doubt, I'm incredibly pleased with my writing efforts over the past year. Over the year, I posted here 144 times, which is a pretty good clip I think. My goal is one a week and I blew that away. I published on Frontend Masters multiple times, and I even co-wrote a book (although it was 'just' an update).

For 2025... more of the same. My blogging will be very low in January as my wife and I are taking our first cruise, but outside of that, I'll have the same goal - a post a week and continued paid writing engagements for other publications. I don't say this a lot, but the fact that I get paid to write, the fact that I can call myself a "professional writer", is a huge thing to me.

2025

So, job one, find a job. Job two, stop playing with Python and really dedicate myself. I've been saying that for years, but with so much Gen AI being done in it, I've got a great excuse to continue to improve my skills there. (I even applied at a certain Python-related company, but got rejected before an interview.) I'm going to try to stop writing any server-side JavaScript and save it for my web platform projects and such.

Above all - my intent is continue to grow, love my wife and kids, cherish my friends, and appreciate what I have. Oh, and I'm going back to therapy as soon as possible. Anxiety is still a killer for me, and it's gotten worse the past few months, so it's time, but I'm waiting until I've settled the job situation.