Brian’s 2021 Year In Review

First time do­ing one of these Years in Review! I’m sub­ti­tling 2021, “Restart”.

Life

COVID-19 was still a thing, but by the end of the year, it’s di­rect ef­fect on us was close to none. I con­tin­ued to work from home, and now have an of­fice!

I dropped my phone in a lawn mower and could­n’t get it re­placed for a cou­ple months. It’s a long story…but the up­side is I broke the habit of check­ing my phone in­ces­santly.

We moved from south­ern Alabama to north­ern Alabama. New church, new friends, new ad­ven­tures.

I got heavy into Christian clas­si­cal ed­u­ca­tion as we started our first grade home­school with Lydia.

Articles I Wrote

Only wrote one ar­ti­cle this year, based on a pre­sen­ta­tion I gave at work on Astro sta­tic sites.

Favorite Articles I Read

• Thoughts on Narrative Framing Devices by Chris Gerwel
• Which type of nov­elty-seek­ing web de­vel­oper are you? by Baldur Bjarnason
• How to Write Things peo­ple ac­tu­ally want to read by James Sinclair
• Embrace the Grind by Jacob Kaplan-Moss
• Own the Tools by David Cain
• Fertility And Humanity’s Failure by Rod Dreher

Notes

My biggest con­tri­bu­tion to the world was Koser’s Theory of Leftovers: At mid­night, left­overs are re­dis­trib­uted evenly.

I wrote some APIs, which were cor­rect 200% of the time.

My broin­law Josh in­tro­duced me to this Starburst Berries and Cream ad. As much as I was in to silly com­mer­cials in col­lege, I have no idea how this one es­caped my no­tice.

Books

Stay tuned for a pod­cast episode on my 2021 books (coming January)

Film

Stay tuned for a pod­cast episode on our 2021 films (coming January)

Podcasts

We recorded only 14 episodes for Ten to One this year, but we did ap­pear on 10+ episodes of The Sci-Fi Christian.

Listening-wise, I got into a bunch of clas­si­cal Christian ed­u­ca­tion pod­casts: Consortium Podcast, The Everlasting Education, Digressio Podcast, and New Humanists. All rec­om­mended.

Metrics

• Unique books read: 1173
• Books to read: 713
• Books to reread: 83
• Podcast episodes to lis­ten to: 83
• Podcasts to start if I get caught up on the ones I’m al­ready sub­scribed to: 12
• Github koser.us is­sues: 97

2022

I’m go­ing to stop track­ing met­rics that, on re­flec­tion, I don’t re­ally care about, like how many to do tasks I’m ac­com­plish­ing.

Fewer goals, but build some daily and weekly habits with longterm ef­fects, like read­ing a poem every day.

Continue de­vel­op­ing our home­school cur­ricu­lum, and cre­ate a web page for it.

Be more so­cial. Basically I need to cul­ti­vate more male friend­ships to off­set the up­com­ing ad­di­tion of an­other baby girl to the house. :)

Spend more time out­side.