Josh's 2019 in Review

You know I've always wanted to do these Year In Review blogs, but I'm usually so darned busy I always forget. My buddy Matt Raible does epic year-in-review blogs and I've always wanted to be more thoughtful, more present, like Matt. So, finally, I am going to do it. Let's see - what was 2019 for me?

I don't even know where to start. It's tempting to boil it down to numbers. Let's see if that works. According to UNITED, alone, not including any other non-Star Alliance airline, I traveled 636,000 "premier qualifying miles," I spent $156,316 on flights, and I flew 187 segments this year. The "premier qualifying miles" have multipliers that mean they're not always the same as actual miles flown. Tripit does a pretty good job of tracking actual miles. It shows that in 2019 I flew 445,000 miles this year. I spoke to a ton of customers and at a ton of conferences. I did every city on the SpringOne Platform tour. I made a ton of other appearances. I went (twice!) to every continent this year, save Antarctica, where I've not yet set foot. In all, I gave north of 280 different talks, online, in-person, at conferences, or for customers, all around the world.

I released a new episode of my podcast, A Bootiful Podcast, every week of 2019. I published a few dozen new Spring Tips videos. I blogged at least twice a week, every week, all year. I always release This Week in Spring, on the Spring blog, and I consistently blog about the latest podcast episode. Some weeks I also blogged about the newest Spring Tips video. Some weeks I also published one or two installments in a series. I did a few series this year on reactive programming, on Spring Cloud for Microsoft Azure, on Spring Cloud for Google Cloud Platform, etc. So, some weeks I did as many as four or five blogs a week. But at least once a week.

In January, I visited Montreal, Canada; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and Charlotte, North Carolina.

In February, I visited Saint Louis, Missouri; Denver, Colorado; Washington DC, USA; Kansas City, Kansas; and Columbus, Ohio.

In March, I visited Tel Aviv, Israel; Atlanta, Georgia; Seattle, Washington; Montreal, Canada; London, UK; Amsterdam, Netherlands; and Pleasanton, California;

In April, I visited New York City, New York; Cape Town, South Africa; Johannesburg, South Africa; Mauritius; Cape Town, South Africa; Belgrade, Serbia; Shanghai, China; Hangzhou, China; Los Angeles, California; Warsaw, Poland; Istanbul, Turkey; Chicago, Illinois; and Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

In May, I visited Chicago, Illinois; San Francisco, California; Sao Paolo, Brazil; London, UK; Krakow, Poland; Barcelona, Spain; Zurich Switzerland; Paris, France; Minsk, Belarus; and Barcelona, Spain.

In June, I visited San Francisco, California; Cork, Ireland; London, UK; Amsterdam, Netherlands; Atlanta, Georgia; Des Moines, Iowa; Minneapolis, Minnesota, Tampa, Florida; Paris, France; and the Dominican Republic;

In July, I visited Medellin, Columbia; Chicago, Illinois; Lima, Peru; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Portland, Oregon; Chicago, Illinois; Denver, Colorado; Burlington, Massachusetts; and San Mateo, California.

In August, I visited Sebastapol, California; and Austin, Texas; Dallas, Texas; Dallas, Texas; San Diego, California; Denver, Colorado; and Bangalore, India.

In September, I visited Oslo, Norway; San Francisco, California; Banff, Canada; Victoria, Canada; Madrid, Spain; and Guadalajara, Mexico.

In October, I visited Taipei, Taiwan; Austin, Texas; Amsterdam, Netherlands; Prague, Czech Republic; Nantes, France; Bologne-Billancourt, France; St. Petersburg, Russia; Chicago, Illinois; and San Francisco, California.

In November, I visited Kyiv, Ukraine; Antwerp, Belgium; Sydney, Australia; Singapore; Seoul, South Korea; and Tokyo, Japan.

In December, I visited Sydney, Australia; Brisbane, Australia; Tokyo, Japan; Los Angeles, California; and San Francisco, California.

The numbers don't tell the whole story, though. In November, my father entered the hospital. I canceled a ton of trips from mid-November onward so I could be by his bedside. He passed away on 11 December 2019, at 5:45 PM PST. I recorded an episode of the podcast about him. It still hurts to think he's gone. Rest in peace, dad.

I wrote another 150 pages or so (I know, I know, I need to pick up the pace!) on my Reactive Spring book, which is available for pre-order now. If you buy it now, you can start reading it now. As I update it, you'll get the updates and you'll also get the final edition once it's published. The book's starting to take final shape and I'm excited to see it finished.

I am also planning on expanding some of the series I've written in the last 12 months and turning them into new books. Hopefully those will get done in 2020, too. But I will only begin that effort, or those efforts, after finishing Reactive Spring.

I also contributed edits and reviews to a few other books, notably, Dr. Venkat Subramaniam's excellent Programming Kotlin. It's excellent, despite me. You should absolutely buy it now. I bought my own copy, it's that good.

I was also the subject of a chapter in Geertjan Wielenga's excellent new book, Developer, Advocate! book on the work of developer advocacy.

On a personal note, this was the first full year with Kimly, who we helped immigrate to the United States in November 2018. I spent more time in San Francisco than ever in order to be home as often as possible for that silly little girl. I took the girls - my partner Tammie and our kid Kimly - with me all around the planet in 2019. We went to half a dozen cities in the US together, to Jamaica, to Peru, to various countries in Europe and Asia and even other cities in California. I try to line these trips up with business visits, but I took a few that were just for thrill of being with my amazing family. I'm with them right now, as I write this roundup, in Denver, Colorado, where we're visiting friends and ringing in the new year in the company of friends. And speaking of Matt Raible, the girls and I are off to go join his family here in Denver to ring in the new year.

Happy New Year, my friends! May your 2020 find you healthy and happy.