Reading Time: 3 minutes

Well, it’s been about 350 days since the last time I reflected on a year. A lot of stuff happened since the Polar Vortex from Hell visited the midwest. Let’s discuss.

How did I do, digitally speaking

How much did I write?

I wrote 35 blog posts this year (  including this one). While I only wrote three more than last year, I did break 100 blog posts. A 39% growth in content means that this blog now sports 122 posts. Neat.

What I wrote about

Some 14 or so blog posts had something to do with Tridion this year. Three of them dealt with Default Schemas for Tridion (DS4T) and four dealt with SDL Media Manager. I appear to be a two-trick pony. I didn’t just write about Tridion, though. I had some Adventures in Europe that involved a cast of characters that included Happypants McGee and Sniffles Magoo. I got the most traffic when I announced that I was leaving Tahzoo.

Did people actually read what I wrote?

The internet is not one to try and prove to you that it doesn’t have awful taste. Yes. People read what I wrote. I had 47,00 views and 24,000 unique page views. That’s about a 50% increase in what I had last year. Not too shabby.

And where was Analog Frank during all of this?

Well, gee, let’s see if I can sum it all up:

1. Travelled to Ohio a whole bunch for work
2. Travelled to Netherlands to speak at the first-ever SDL Tridion Development Summit on SDL Media Manager
3. Skipped down to Belgium after chilling in Amsterdam
4. Travelled to Content Bloom’s Canadian retreat in Nova Scotia (where I learned that Canada is, apparently, a real place)
5. Travelled from Canada to Netherlands, to visit my wife who was working in Amsterdam
6. Took my wife to Antwerp, in Belgium… and also to Paris.
7. Travelled to the SDL Tridion MVP retreat in Évora, Portugal.
8. Travelled to DC  for work
9. Travelled to Texas for work

Notice a pattern?  I left this country, and visited more foreign places in this year alone, than I did in the previous ten.

 What Did I Do?

So, amidst all of the travel, some other things happened:

1. Won the SDL Tridion MVP award
2. Left Tahzoo after nearly 3 years for Content Bloom
3. Parted ways with Content Bloom two months later for Tahzoo
4. Enrolled at the University of Phoenix to earn a Programming Certificate
5. Read about 40 books (Breaking my usual average of 30). For the first time, I read more fiction than non-fiction
6. Released McSandy to Beta. McSandy is a drag and drop code editor that works without an internet connection.
7. Wrote a lot of code for Media Manager
8. Made a lot of super generic schemas
9. Played Bass in the worship band quite a bit
10. Almost made it through this “Read the Bible in 1 year” plan that I’ve been doing for three years…almost.

And What did I learn?

1. You can travel too much, but this can be ok
2. You can love your work more than your family, but this is never ok
3. Amsterdamnit is totally ok to say while in Amsterdam
4. If you change names to protect the innocent in a blog post, it’s best to do the same for the guilty, too (sorry, Mr. Tokerson)
5. When you interview people, hire the ones that would be better bosses than you
6. It’s fine to admit that you aren’t a good fit for a great company
7. Don’t write farewell blog posts under any circumstances
8. Don’t burn bridges under any circumstances, either
9. It’s better to have patience where you are, than anxiety where you’ll be
10. If you interview someone that’s a better boss than you, you’ll thank yourself later
11. If your dentist cancels your appointment because she got a tooth stuck in her eye, you have already received the maximum amount of information regarding the nature of the cancellation
12. Java is dumb

What’s coming in 2015?

Here’s what I’m hoping for (in no particular order):

• McSandy gets out of Beta
• McSandy grows an online version
• I convince Robert Curlette to let me speak again at the Tridion Developer Summit
• The Wife and I go to Iceland, where we see some elves
• Someone gives the Wife and me a baby (because that’s how adoption works)