Remembering 2011

Started: 2011-12-31 23:13:57

Submitted: 2011-12-31 23:29:53

Visibility: World-readable

I'm sitting on the couch in my in-law's living room, thinking I ought to go to sleep so I can catch a flight home in the morning, but it's New Year's Eve and I'm going to sleep through the advent of the new year in both my current and home time zones, so I feel compelled to look back on 2011 and look forward to 2012. Professionally, 2011 was a big year. This is how I summarized the year in my mother's Christmas letter:

Ted continues to work as a software engineer at Qualcomm in Boulder. This spring he was promoted to Staff Engineer and moved into a window office with a mountain view. In the fall he took on a lead role in a small device driver team, which he finds both challenging and interesting, often at the same time.

Personally, 2011 felt more like a retrenchment: I didn't do anything fantastically new and exciting but kept doing the things I did the previous year. I continued to study India, shifted my focus eastward to China, and got a community borrowing card at Colorado State University's library. I climbed more mountains but kept coming face-to-face with reminders that I can't do everything I want: I have to pick roughly three things and run with that.

2012 looks like it'll be a big year: Our plans call for selling our house and moving to Gunbarrel; starting Calvin in preschool; and visiting Hong Kong around Christmas. Professionally I need to take my new team lead role and run with it as far as I can. There are mountains calling my name that won't climb themselves, and foreign countries (and special administrative regions) that won't visit themselves.

Here's to 2011. And 2012.