2018 year in review

I'm a few days late writing this, but I wanted to chronicle some of what I've done, what I've learned, who I've met, and how I plan to spend 2019.

I learned a ton about yoga and my body. Although I feel like I exhausted the "self-help" portion of the yoga practice, the physical movements have followed me into the rest of my life, aiding in my balance and overall physical strength.

To begin a new chapter in my fitness journey, I started a new fitness program called Academy at my friend Mike's gym, Eastside Strength & Performance. His emphasis is on teaching how to answer your own questions during your training, which I really appreciate. If you're in the Portland area I can't recommend Mike's approach to fitness enough.

I continued working on Formbot, my HTML-form-submission-to-Slack app. It's technically profitable, but definitely not enough to quit consulting. If you love building static sites but always cringe when you need to set up a web service specifically to drive your contact form, Formbot might be for you.

The thought of buying a house soon continues to enter my brain, but I just can't make the numbers work. Portland's price-to-rent ratio is almost 30, meaning it's actually a renter's market (versus buying a house). Plus I'm not really sure I want to own a house in the first place.

Being that somehow Portland didn't have a FIRE (Financially Independent, Retired Early) meetup on Meetup.com, I took the liberty of starting one. Portland FIRE has grown to over 100 members!

In 2019, I want to write more. I've found that I'm often discouraged writing and publishing things here because I judge myself too critically. Instead of judging myself so harshly, I want to throw things against the wall and see if they stick. That's been my modus operandi for decades. Why stop now?