2021 in Review

2021

What I love about this time of year, is reading the recaps people do of their year. I think it’s important to take the time to reflect on things that were good, things that were bad, and things that one may want to change moving forward. I find Dave Rupert’s recaps to be very nice and I’ll model this recap after his. I already tried to do that with “vibe check” but that didn’t go well. More on that topic later. 

Coronavirus 

Well what a year for Coronavirus huh? At the end of 2020, we knew we had vaccines coming. That was our hope. I was vaccinated on campus at my alma mater, BGSU. If you know me well, you know I have a very soft spot for Bowling Green and it felt right to try and end this garbage experience in the fieldhouse where I have some of my best memories. The nurse who stuck me the first time did it and said “I suspect you’ve waited a long time for this”. I’m not a super emotional guy but I almost lost it. I’ve been lucky too…I haven’t lost anyone close to me. I’m really good at staying home. Seeing others’ pain, hurts me the most regarding all of this and at that moment I had some hope that this, the shot, was it. 

For a while it was right? If we look back on June numbers, It’s amazing how far we had come and how far we’ve gone backward since. I never in my life suspected there were so many anti-vax folks running around. My patience is NULL at this point for those folks. I honestly don’t have anything nice to say on the topic so MOVING ON…

Here we are again, coming up on 2 years of this thing. The Delta variant caused a ton of damage. The Omicron variant will likely cause a lot of damage as well. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, I’m built for the kind of behavior that is expected of us for this. I can work from home, I don’t mind being home, I don’t meet people in person very often. I’m well informed on the current events of this virus and what is expected of us. Even after all of that, I’m tired. I’m so tired of this. If you’ve lost loved ones, I’m sorry. If you’re a healthcare provider and these 2 years have been just terrible, I’m sorry. 

Career stuff

In far happier news, this year I started a new job. In October I started as CRM Manager at Bungie in Bellevue, Washington. Ever since loading up Halo 3 for the first time, it’s been a semi-secret of mine that I wanted to work in games. I wasn’t always sure how it was going to happen but I’ve spent a lot of time just developing my skills and interests, hoping one day I’d have the opportunity to join the industry. The fact I joined my favorite studio, is well beyond icing on the career cake. So Joslyn and I packed up and moved across the country to Seattle. We like it here. It’s different from Ohio in many ways. We are still adjusting and that will simply take time. 

If you find a time machine, go back to 2010 and tell teenage Andrew standing outside GameStop for the midnight launch of Halo Reach, that one day he’d be living in Seattle helping bring Bungie games to the world, he’d freak out. Part of me still freaks out each day. It really is a privilege. 

Games 

Speaking of games, let’s talk games. I have a couple of standouts this year that I wanted to call out. Not really any “Game of the Year” type discussion, just games I liked. 

Here is an incredibly biased pick (but I probably would’ve picked it anyway). Destiny 2 continues to be my most played game. The seasonal narrative over the year has been absolutely fantastic. The 30th-anniversary content is awesome and has really been the shot in the arm for the current season. If you haven’t tried Destiny yet, I’d recommend it 😉 

Late in the year, Halo Infinite dropped. It’s the first Halo in six years and I’ve been having a blast with it. I’m still working on the campaign so no spoilers here. I really appreciate the open-world aspect of this game and it’s been fun to roam around as the Chief. The PVP has been fun and feels very good. My current hope is that we get some remade maps back but I completely understand why we wouldn’t have those at launch. The maps we have are really good. I’m just a huge sucker for “The Pit”. 

This year I also finished Cyberpunk 2077. For as rough of a launch as that game had, I absolutely loved it. I don’t normally love games like that. I never really got into The Witcher or The Elder Scrolls series but something about Cyberpunk 2077 really connected with me. The technical world, inside a huge metropolis that is Night City, was something I loved as a player. I can’t wait for some DLC to drop for that game. 

I picked up Call of Duty Vanguard while it was on sale and I am pleasantly surprised. I liked the multiplayer in Modern Warfare (2019) but Cold War just never stuck with me. I really like the multiplayer in Vanguard and I suspect I’ll like the campaign as well. 

Things that didn’t go well

As someone who is incredibly fortunate, it feels a little odd to point things out that didn’t go well but let’s review. 

I didn’t launch an app. I’m not concerned about making money on an app or even making anything all that useful to anything other than myself but I wanted to do that this year and didn’t so missed on that one. 

I’m still not in great shape. In December of 2020 I was diagnosed with Achilles tendonitis, plantar fasciitis, and patellar tendonitis. I rehabbed those injuries through April, and they lingered for most of the year. They are basically gone now but as I’ve adjusted to the hills of the pacific northwest,  I’ve developed some really lovely ITBS. So I’m working through that now. I’m about 20 pounds overweight so I’d really like to get that off this year and I’m working to get there. I suspect an optimal weight for the running I’d like to do is probably dropping about 25 pounds but let’s focus on one thing at a time. 

Lastly, I did not keep up with this blog as much as I’d like. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to publish at least once a month. If I find that I’m in the “I don’t know what to write about” state, I could always just do a “vibe check” as inspired by Dave Rupert. I did that a couple of times this year. I also wrote a few things and then deleted them because I didn’t think they, the posts, were very good. 

2022

I completely understand where others are coming from when they decide they don’t want to set goals for the next year. The past couple of years have been, at the most, completely devastating or at the least, a huge pain. It’s hard to set personal goals when everyone has had the same goal of “don’t get sick”. However, I’m going to set some goals anyway. 

A VP of Marketing I used to work with, had this process where goals should be set under the umbrella of a theme. So the theme I’m working around this year is improving my health. I’m fortunate to not have anything seriously wrong with me but I need to do more to prevent issues in the future. 

  • Goal 1: Lose 20 pounds this year. 
    • Sub-goal A: Lose 5 pounds by April 1
  • Goal 2: Take (at least) 1 day off per quarter 
  • Goal 3: Limit personal (web) development time to 7 hours per week. 

My hope with these goals is that I’m not limiting myself, but I’m operating with more intention. If I create certain limits, then I have to be more intentional with my time and do better about setting micro-goals, rather than floating around on a project because I don’t set limits for myself and end up feeling exhausted without much accomplished. 

Along the way, I plan on giving this site the much-needed UI update it deserves. I do plan on filling it in with content as well. I often write things and then decide “who wants to hear what I have to say” and the truth is, it might be less than 10 people but that’s ok. I didn’t start a blog to become famous anyway so who cares how many folks read it. I find having your own site, and having a blog, to be the thing that makes the internet so special. Imagine having an unlimited amount of characters that you had to think through and spend time constructing. Might make for a healthier internet which is what I’m all about. 

If you made it this far, thanks for reading. I hope you are well.