Jan 10, 2023 3 min read

2022 Year in Review

Getting lost in streets of Paris on a warm afternoon.

Last week, I attended a New Years dinner party with my entrepreneur friends in Seattle. After a filling meal, everyone was asked to share a project that they were most proud of creating this past year. As a software developer that loves to tinker and develop new projects, this is normally an easy answer for me. But as I reflected on this, I quickly realized that I had very little to share.

Being an entrepreneur is a financially high-risk endeavor. Many of your projects, even the ones that are exciting, don’t always work out. As a result, we are constantly playing a game with our finances.

Our time is the valuable resource, and we can use it to either build something new, or make money though a traditional job. While the money part isn’t fun, it’s essential to ensuring that we can continue to support our family as we create new companies.

In a way, my job often feels like a game of football. I’m either on offense, trying to develop the next great idea, or on defense, trading my time for money.

For me, 2022 was a year of defense. I spent a good chunk of my time saving money though consulting, and wrapping up work on my previous company. There were several days during this stretch where I woke up extremely unmotivated. But I kept moving forward, knowing that for every day I worked, I was buying future days for my next project.

But 2022 was by no means a bad year. I was able to visit much of the world as I worked remotely from Paris, London, Denver, Montreal, Hawaii, and San Francisco. I traveled to Montreal to meet my wife’s grandparents for the first time. I was also able to spend several months with my family. My wife and I ended the year by moving back to Seattle, where we purchased our first home.

Photos from Denver, Montreal, Paris, Portugal, London, & Disneyland Paris

While it was painful to have not created much this past year, I don’t regret how I spent my time. There are some years that just better spent on defense - whether that’s helping family, saving money, or taking care of life. But 2023 is different. I’ve already dedicated time each week to work on new projects, and these first couple weeks have felt amazing.

This is the year that I go back on offense.