My Year in Review - 2019 Edition

2019 in General

Once again I made a promise that I would post a lot more often to this site, but once again a lot of things got in the way and I wasn’t able to get as much done as I hoped. I was doing very well in the earlier part of the year, but after the middle of April I ran into a lot of issues that prevented me from focusing my attention on the site.

I started a new role in January 2019, which isn’t really that uncommon for me. I spent the last days of 2019 going trough a lot of the documents on my computers and I consolidated a lot of it. In the process I updated my resume and a few other things, and it turns out that since August of 2009 I have worked full time at 7 different companies in 11 different roles. Since I started doing contract work a few years ago I have worked in some capacity at over 15 different companies. That doesn’t even include the random one-off consultations or one-time jobs that required me to invoice a company for work.

The company that I joined in early 2019 had a task for me, and I promised them that I would deliver before the end of the year. It was simple, rebuild the entire Network Infrastructure from the ground up, and make Security the priority. I’ve done it before, but not for a company that was spread out around North America. I plan on doing a full write-up about it (with redacted information), but it involved untangling the mess of two Datacentres that hadn’t been looked after in over a decade, buying all new Firewalls and Switches, flying to several cities, and doing an unplanned Datacenter migration. It was incredibly stressful, but I finished everything by December 15, 2019. So that took up most of my time this year.

In doing all of that work I was able to make a few decisions on my future career path and what I want to do going forward. I have a list of certifications and training that I want to take care of in 2020.

I also made more of an effort to volunteer and spend more time not focusing on IT. This is definitely something that helped me take my mind off of things and gave me time to relax, even though I was still working.

Overall, 2019 went very well for me, but there are a lot of things that I need to do in 2020.

2020 Goals

I planned on taking care of a lot of unfinished work in 2019, and I am still working on that. I have 2 dozen articles in various stages of completion, and I intend to get those completed before I start anything else. I also plan on published something to this site at least twice a month.

I also looked through a lot of external services and sites that I deal with. I have been trying to consolidate or eliminate a lot of services that I don’t use anymore, or I shouldn’t be using anymore. I also spent much of my break at the end of 2019 going through old backups and other devices and clearing what I didn’t need anymore. I’m very minimalist in the real world, but I hold onto a lot of digital clutter that was slowing me down a lot.

I also plan on completing at least four certifications this year. Two will be renewals/upgrades and the other two will be brand new ones.

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