A year ago, I pronounced 2021 to be my Year of Courage. I had no idea what that would mean exactly, and that’s kind of the point of yearly themes.
Here’s where I succeeded in choosing courage over comfort:
- I gave up writing code after 14 years of doing it full time
- I stepped into a pure management role with ten direct reports
- My friend Jace and I put ourselves out there with our dumb podcast
- I signed up for a marathon and a 21k Spartan race (both in 2022)
- I broke out of my neighborhood and started trail running
- I discovered that I have social anxiety and started therapy
- I signed up for a bunch of groups at work that I’d normally avoid
- I had a bajillion coffee chats with people I didn’t know
And here’s where I stuck with comfort and failed to choose courage:
- In the second half of the year, I started cruising at work
- I didn’t take my body goal seriously until the last few weeks
- I delegated some presentations and talks that I was scared to give
- I haven’t run a 12 Week Year cycle in months (got one starting next week though)
- I stayed mostly quiet about being pro-vax in a largely anti-vax region, despite covid taking loved ones from us
- I still habitually look away instead of starting a conversation with someone I don’t know well
So I’d call it a mixed bag, but I’m proud of some of the wins. I’ll carry lessons learned from the failures into my theme for 2022 (coming soon to a blog post near you).
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