2024 was a mostly-enjoyable, momentous, and personally fulfilling year. I got engaged to Annie!

The big moment

All that said, I didn’t end up writing as much as I’d want to, and a lot happened, so I figured I’d write a year in review post. I’ll start by summarizing the year on a bunch of topics I care about, and then break down month-by-month summaries (I wrote those first).

Maybe someday I’ll get around to some of the other content I mentioned…

Year breakdown

Relationship: It was great! Annie and I still live in New York, we got engaged at the end of the year, and now we’re planning our wedding. I became closer to some new friends in NYC, but some other friends have moved away/drifted further apart.

Family: Whole-family get togethers have become more rare as each of my sisters/me/my parents all live in different places, but we got to all hang out in Cape Cod, as well as the holidays. One of my sisters stayed with me NY a couple times, which was fun. I also got back to Boston a few times to see my parents.

Work: There were some adjustments as I changed titles from “tech lead” to “engineering manager”. Before, 3/5 of my days were taken up with meetings/planning/x-functional coordination and I could mostly code on the other days or in the late afternoon/evening. With the title, closer to 4/5 are mostly spent on “coordination” during core workday hours, and coding/deep technical work has become more exclusively an after 4PM thing. I worked a lot when I was in New York, and I mostly enjoyed that, but I don’t think I’ve quite figured out the right schedule/balance between supporting my reports’ development, getting stuff done as a team, and getting stuff done myself.

Travel: Very successful year of travel! New countries:

  • Costa Rica
  • UK (briefly)
  • Ireland
  • South Korea
  • Japan

All of which were enjoyable, though Japan and Ireland were particularly highlights. The month-by-month has more detailed travel breakdowns.

Fitness: Not the best year for fitness. It’s not like I stopped exercise, but a shoulder injury earlier in the year combined and an inconsistent schedule meant that I didn’t do much beyond the standard stretching/lifting 2-3x/week I’ve been doing for years. I’d like to get more cardio in my routine, but I haven’t figured out a way to make it happen yet. I started getting into longer bike rides, but actually got mugged on a bike ride in October, which killed that plan.

Reading: After basically not reading for pleasure at all during late high school/college, during COVID I tried to get into it, but have been struggling for the last few years to really make it a habit. 2024 was the year I went all in on audiobooks, accepting my limited attention span and mostly giving up on the pretense of paper-reading. It’s worked out! I got through 6 books this year (StoryGraph)

  • Chip War: Excelling summary of the history and 2022-current state of semiconductor manufacturing
  • The Martian: Page-turning space/science thriller. Really liked this one, it went by quick.
  • The Wager: True story about a crew that got shipwrecked and miraculously made it back to England. The naval history bits dragged at time, but the shipwreck part was fun.
  • A Course Called Ireland: Narrative of a guy who walked around the entire island and played links throughout. Really fun read and was perfect prep for my mini Irish golf trip.
  • A Brief History of Japan: Nice CliffsNotes for thousands of years of Japanese history that gave me just enough context to appreciate some of the museums/sites in Japan more when we visited.
  • Shogun: Fell in love with this one, probably a top 3 favorite book I’ve read since high school. A really engrossing page turner with a complex, but not contrived plot. Toranaga and Yabu were compelling characters. The ending was a bit of a letdown, it really feels like it set the stage for a second book that Clavell sadly never wrote.
  • Dune: Started it during this year, and am still currently reading.

Writing: I wrote a couple blogs in the beginning of the year, but haven’t written much lately. I find that I often have ideas for blogs when I’m out walking/showering/doing the dishes, but my “writing time” would be at night before bed, and inspiration just hasn’t struck much.

Golf: I played a lot of golf in the beginning of the year on my trips to Florida/Ireland/CA. I wasn’t hitting it great on these trips, but I really felt like I was scrambling/putting well. As the year went on, even as I was driving it decently, my irons got worse and worse. This was frustrating, because I can’t really practice living in the city. I’m now in the process of rebuilding the swing with a 5 iron membership, but progress is slow.

Music: I wanted to get much better at guitar this year, and start playing with other people. Unfortunately, neither of those happened. I didn’t totally put the guitar away, but it probably was played less than any other year in the 2020s. I partly attribute this to a poor lesson experience. I tried taking a couple lessons, but the instructor’s laid-back style just didn’t work with the formal classical piano lessons I’m used to. It is a skill I’d like to get better at, but I’m not sure 2025 will be the year.

Month-by-month

January

  • I try to do dry January, and succeed for most of the month, but don’t notice a difference & decide the taste/social benefits are worth the hit to health
  • I went on a golf trip with my family+Dad’s good friend. It was my first time in Orlando and mostly fun, even though I played pretty poorly.
  • The golf trip was also unfortunately the beginning (or I guess, the first acknowledgement) of some right shoulder trouble. It probably started years ago with football/rugby/poor bench form, but golf and an awkward lift of the arm on a couch took it to the point of frequent discomfort.

February

  • The main excitement of the 29-day month was a trip to Costa Rica. Annie’s mom took us and her dad and we had a blast! We flew into San Juan and spent a couple days there, including an action-packed day trip to the Arenal Volcano area. Then we spent a few days in Monteverde, highlighted by a night nature hike where we saw a ton of cool wildlife. We then spent the last few days near Manuel Antonio Park, waking up to the sound of Howler monkeys and enjoying sunsets at the beach Me and Annie at the beach near Manuel Antonio Park
  • I was also in the thick of building out a side project I’ve been working on. January through March were high-focus development months: we had the plan set, and I built out most of the feature functionality during this period. I was feeling particularly overloaded by meetings/planning at my job, so having the coding project as a nighttime activity was a welcome break. But I also had trouble managing life + work + the side project, and need to keep working on time management when trying to juggle significant responsibilities outside of quotidian life/work.

March

  • Amtraked up to Boston to see my very good friend who lives in Japan and was visiting his parent in early March. Annie also had to be there for work, so we spent a fun night at the Suite Life of Zack and Cody hotel.
  • I then flew from Boston to Houston for a work trip, where we tested some new software with their PLCs.
  • My title at work had been in flux for a while. Since about November 2022, I’d been doing some form of “tech lead”-adjacent responsibilities: helping to plan projects, running sprint planning, etc. There were a few adjustments in responsibility in the Nov. 2022 - Mar. 2024 time as we had one Head of Eng leave and another join, but by about June 2023 I’d settled into a role where I was doing a larger chunk of managerial duties (project management, product requirements gathering, backlog maintenance, sprint planning), without the official yoke of reports/regular 1:1s.
  • A great previous manager of mine encouraged me to try out people management, so after getting my hands dirty with some of the tech lead responsibilities, I’d decided that I wanted to go all-in and try my hand at having technical reports. During the 2023 performance evals, our Head of Eng decided that I was ready to give it a shot, and March 2024 was when I officially took on the role.

April

April was busy, and had some S-tier golf courses:

  • I left Easter Sunday with my Dad’s family in Westchester to fly over to the UK for another work trip where we were installing software. We were a couple hours outside of London, so I had to learn to drive on the left side of the road, which was a trip. The first hour or so when I had to drive on the highway from Heathrow to Gatwick to pick up my coworker were particularly harrowing, but I mostly had the hang of it after that.
  • After the work was done in Salisbury, I took the puddle-jumper over to Dublin and met up with Annie. I then proceeded to play the windiest, wettest, coldest, and most magical 3 rounds of golf of my life.
  • I started off at Royal Dublin while Annie was flying in. It was my only sunny round, but the wind off Dublin Bay didn’t mean it was easy. I went off by myself, but a couple of members ended up catching up to me around hole 15 and they were nice enough to join up with me and chat for the last few holes. They were so nice that we went into the club and had a couple Guinness, before I realized my phone was dead and my girlfriend who’d just flown across the Atlantic to meet me was waiting for me to pick her up. There was a bit of stress trying to navigate Dublin rush-hour traffic with a dead phone that refused to hold a charge in the car, but I did eventually find her!
  • After I picked her up, we drove out to Sligo, where we stayed at the lovely Driftwood Inn facing the ocean. Annie was annoyed during the drive, but after a great full Irish the next morning with an ocean view, she was warming up to Ross’s Point.
  • I left bright and early for my tee time at the County Sligo Golf Club. When I got there around 8AM, the parking lot was empty and I was a bit concerned that there’d be no one to send me out. But I made my way in the clubhouse, bought a lovely pompom beanie, and made my way out to the first hole by myself. I enjoyed a sunny tee shot and climb up to the second hole, and after that the rain started. Even in driving rain, County Sligo remains my favorite course I’ve ever played. The ocean views, rolling hills, and dramatic elevated greens/tee shots, plus a rainbow and a few friendly old members that let me join up, made this the highlight of my trip.
  • After my round at Sligo, I hurried out to Enniscrone, 60m away. When I arrived, I was soaked, tired, and my back was hurting, but I still enjoyed the even-more-dramatic dunescape. The elevation changes almost felt a bit gimmicky/Pete Dye at points, and I did get lost and start playing the second 18 for half a hole because I was so confused by the routing, but overall it was still a great course and I’d be happy to go back. I think I was just so on a high from Sligo that I couldn’t fully appreciate it.
  • After my 3 rounds in 2 days, Annie and I had 1 night in Dublin near St. Stephen’s Green, which reminded me in the best ways of Boston Common. We spent a beautiful day walking around Dublin. The Brazen Head and Guinness factory were both worth the hype.
  • The next week, Copia had our retreat in San Diego, one of my favorite places in the world. It was great to see/meet remote coworkers, especially the ones I was about to be full-time managing, and we did a nice hike around Torrey Pines I’d never done before. I even got to sneak out and play Torrey Pines North. To golf architecture nerds who say Torrey isn’t “great architecture”: shove it, I loved the ocean views, open fairways, and public access.
  • After a whirlwind of golf+travel in the first couple weeks, the rest of April was spent pretty heads down at work. We kicked off new workstreams and I built closer relationships with the new reports.

May

  • I finally spent an entire month in the state of NY, which was a nice change of pace. Development on my side project slowed down and I was getting into a better groove in my new role at work.
  • I finally went to a doctor for my shoulder issues and started a PT plan. Shoutout to Spear, my guy Jensen taught me some great exercises and I’ve been able to get back to activity/lifting largely pain-free
  • I took Annie out to Montauk for her birthday, which was a cool trip. We ate some good seafood, checked out some of the bar scene, and played a bunch of tennis. I enjoyed seeing the ball bounce again after a tennis-free winter. We started getting into it in Summer 2023; Annie had never played before and I hadn’t touched a racket since 2016. I snuck out to Montauk Downs while we were out there, which was a real treat of a public course.

June

  • June wasn’t particularly eventful. I went out to Joplin, MO for another round of software testing, and enjoyed getting to know some of our customers out there and see how much complexity and R&D goes into manufacturing even something we think of as day-to-day.
  • My Celtics won the championship☘️. I loved seeing two great guys, Jaylen Brown & Jayson Tatum, who had taken a lot of criticism and worked hard for the city of Boston, get over the hump. Also, since they’re basically the same age as me, I’ve had a different appreciation watching the first generation of Boston athletes my age grow their status as legends in the city.

July

  • Another great extended family Cape Cod vacation. There are now 3 members of the next generation of cousins. Time just keeps on going…
  • At work, my team and I built out a prototype of a potential new category of product. It was a bit of a sprint to get something working for a customer demo, but it was satisfying to see it succeed.

August

  • A beautiful (but brutally hot) wedding in Ipswich, MA for Annie’s coworker.
  • Annie dislocated her shoulder playing tennis. It was a real bummer, I was trying to show her how to serve and it just…didn’t work out. Of all the injuries, it’s not a great one.
  • Went out to CA to ask Annie’s parents to marry her and played Corica Park, which is a great track.

September

  • Fixed a very fun/tricky Postgres/AWS DMS bug at work that I want to blog about
  • We went to South Korea/Japan. My best high school friend has been living over in Japan for the past few years. I’ve had an idle desire to go visit for a while, and this summer one of our other friends got an internship in Tokyo for the summer, so Annie and I booked a trip out there.
  • We spent 3 days in Seoul. It reminded me in some ways of LA, sharing some positives (lots of good food including KBBQ, vibrant nightlife, pockets of beautiful nature) and some that I don’t (fairly superficial, very sprawling - although Seoul at least has awesome public transit). Seeing the DMZ and an actual North Korean cities from afar was super cool. We had the best beef of the trip at the Majang meat market.
  • Going in, I thought Japan would be cool, and I was excited to see my friend, but even with some high expectations I was blown away. I wouldn’t say I’m a full on weeb; I didn’t even really feel “wow, I could really see myself living here” like I have with some European cities. But man Japan was cool. The food was way more varied than I thought, the bullet trains fuck, the people and culture were just interesting. A place I will definitely return to at some point. Though I’m not sure when…the travel is tough

October

  • Tried a couple good Omakase spots in NYC
  • I went to Philly for the first time to see a good college friend who was visiting, and ended up seeing my cousin. Seeing Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell in person were cool, but there’s no doubt in my mind that Boston and NYC »>.
  • My sister stayed with me for a while leading up to Halloween. It was really nice to get to hang with her for an extended amount of time.

November

  • I went back to Boston for a weekend to see my parents and pick up the engagement ring, which I’d shipped up there so Annie wouldn’t see it.
  • I spent most of the month preparing for the engagement (party, photographer, etc). We got engaged on campus at UCLA and had a small get-together afterwards with some family/LA-local friends. It was nice to see some faces I hadn’t seen in a while all together in LA.
  • After the engagement, we went back to Sonoma for Annie’s family’s Thanksgiving, which is always a large group.

December

  • Advent of Code consumed my non-work life. It was a blast, but put me on an awful sleep schedule I’m still fighting to recover from.
  • I went back up to Boston for a few days to spend time with my nuclear family, and then we came back to the NY metro to spend a few days around Christmas with my Dad’s family as we always do. It was fun to see how much the baby cousins had grown and catch up with everyone.