Well, the year's start comin', and they don't stop comin'. Neither do the year-in-review blog posts!

Chop Wood, Carry Water

I've entered a chop wood, carry water phase in several areas of my life. And I'm pretty satisfied with that!

I remember when I started learning to play saxophone as a kid. The first year or so were such a blast. There was something new to learn every day. The feeling of a new identity emerging was exciting. And each problem to tackle was wholly novel.

The further along I went, though, it became less about solving novel problems, and doing the common things uncommonly well.

This is where plenty of people will fall off of a project, or leave a skill after becoming an advanced beginner.

But I'll say that I've missed this feeling of routine. While it's not as flashy, there's something comforting about continuing to refine a skill or a project just a bit at a time through repeated effort.

I've tried new things and stretched, sure. Though, in a large part, they're continuations of things I've been doing for a few years now. And I'm happy to be settling in. The road stretches far ahead, and I'm looking forward to walking it. One foot in front of the other.

Art

In 2023 I taught myself to draw. In 2024, I focused on taking those skills to digital art. I've loved working with color and light.

I wrote down my impressions from the experience earlier this year.

I'm far from comfortable with it. When I'm a bit low on energy, I'll reach for a sketchbook, preferring figure studies and drawing from imagination. But digital painting has yielded my proudest pieces. And my album artwork has gotten much more interesting thanks to it!

More to continue into the next year!

Music

I thought I'd try to take things slow this year for writing music. But my curiosity got the better of me!

This year I released 9 short albums. I wanted to lean into recording more of my guitar playing. The Takanaka inspired Snow Cones, the moody midwest emo vibes of Dog Angst, the folksy Flowers album, the light acoustic Desert, and my recent swing at a punk single My Mix CD all satisfied that itch.

Compared to purely produced albums, these have been humbling. When producing, there's really only 2 phases: Compose & Refine. But with acoustic instruments, there's a third phase: Practice the Dang Part Until It Sounds Good. So they take a while! But it feels great to be bringing my own two hands into the music I'm writing!

My production albums were fun explorations. Several tech nostolgia works: Drum and Bass with Space Frog 64, 80's fusion & atmospheric music with Jam 3D, Square's SNES era JRPG's with Super Duck RPG, and the Frutiger Aero aesthetic with SkyBox.

It's been a lovely year on piano and guitar, too. I've spent much of the year with jazz standards on piano, and just started doing the same on guitar partway through the year. Here are my favorite recordings:

• Skylark – Piano
• Boogie Woogie – Piano
• All the Things You Are – Chord Melody
• My Mix CD Intro
• To Zanarkand (not a jazz standard, but certainly a Final Fantasy standard!)

Tech

It was a very DevOps year for me. I spent plenty of time during the year getting familiar with CI/CD processes as well as deploying Docker Images to AWS.

I aim to learn a new programming language each year to stay sharp. This year it was Java. Many similarities to C#, of course. And I'm appreciative of that — I felt there was more time to really get comfortable with the OOP aspects of those languages since there was so much that was already familiar.

While not a new technical skill, I'll say that I've been enjoying greater ownership in my work. It's highly gratifying to be taking on larger projects and responsibilities. And, of course, with that there's more to learn all the time. A happy position to be in!

Here are a few favorite posts covered on the tech blog this year:

• Setting Up OAuth and Email Providers for Next Authentication
• Deploying Docker Compose Application to AWS EC2
• Configuring a CI/CD Pipeline in CircleCI to Deploy a Docker Image to AWS ECS
• Layers in a Java Spring Boot API
• Getting Started with LangGraph

Favorite Books Read

I didn't read too many new books. If anything, I enjoyed revisiting books from previous years. So here's a short list:

• What Matters Most by James Hollis — Read this at least 5 times this year. Highly resonate. Would absolutely recommend to anyone that's reached the end of their success script in life.
• Rodney R. Rodney by Violaine Briat – A slice of life/comedy horror comic. A very particular flavor, and I'm all about it.
• Harmonic Experience by W. A. Mathieu – I spent a few evenings with this music text book. Absolutely beautiful. The most human approach to teaching theory. I wish I could go back and swap my theory classes with exercises from this book.
• The Sketchbook of Loish: Art in Progress — Stunning character art! I'm only just becoming familiar with her work and I haven't been able to get enough of it.
• FORCE: Dynamic Life Drawing by Mike Mattesi – My favorite figure drawing resource so far. A genuine focus is put on gesture and expression from the beginning. Works best when paired with the online video courses.

It may be time to revive a couple of good habits: Having an audiobook handy and leaving a new-to-me book by my bed.

Writing

I also eased up on writing this year. I wanted to pour more time into the crafts above. I noticed partway through the year that it was hard to find time to write fuller articles, so I started the Clippings tag. Still a collection in progress. It's something that I'm hoping to keep short and sweet. That way I won't feel shy about jotting something down!

My favorites from this year:

• Dynamo
• How Long Is a Piece of String?
• 5 Years of Programming and Leading With Curiosity
• Staying In the Ring
• James Gurney and Art as an Expression of Nature

Life

In list format, other things that were great this year:

• Solar eclipse!! 🌑
• A few great trips: Chicago for work, Austin for a friend's wedding, and Pennsylvania for Miranda's sister's wedding.
• Miranda and I saw Maggie Rogers in concert for our shared birthday. She was even better the second time!
• Also saw Lucinda Williams in concert. Still going strong!
• Playing in a community band! 🎷
• Got really into vintage PC's and ended up at VCF SW in Dallas. 💾
• Spending one day a week working from Denton before said community band rehearsals.
• Hosted a close friend from grad school several days in the fall.
• Moved to a more suburban part of Dallas. Loving it!
• A+ Christmas in Houston with Miranda and my folks. 🎄

2025

I'm going to be targeting a longer term project for the next year. Not much to say just yet, more to come later.

For everything else: Chop wood, carry water.

See you there! 🪵🪣