2024 - My year in review
My theme for 2024 was “fix it.” I’ve heard that there’s a negative connotation to it. I never saw it, and definitely didn’t feel like there was negative energy to my year. From my perspective, there were several things I felt like I could help improve. Whether it be the light in the bedroom, my terminal UX, or helping a project achieve a goal, things could be better.
I am curious how I will look at 2024 in the future. I think 2023 was more pivotal, but 2024 was a sustained acceleration of growth. Perhaps that growth is what makes 2023 appear more pivotal.
Regardless, it was a full year! I’m happy with where I’m at and am thrilled to see what I can do in 2025.
This post is largely for future Tim, so don’t feel obligated to read it.
Personal
Marriage
This year was full of challenges, and I’m thankful to have someone as grounded, empathetic and reasonable as Emily. It’s easy to take tasks and invest yourself into things when you have a support system that always advocates for you. We are in a very comfortable place in our home life with job and financial security. It’s been allowing us to put copious amounts of energy into growing future opportunities which is pretty exciting.
We are definitely due a trip for fun in 2025. 2024 was full of action and problem-solving, so we struggled to make space for relaxation. For 2025, I’m hoping to create more space for us to relax and deepen our connection.
Family
There were some pretty big ups and downs with family this year. For 2025, I hope to continue on a path of positivity and acceptance.
Friendships
Sooooo many weddings. So many weddings. When did I turn 28 again?
In the first half of the year, I saw some of my close friends quite frequently (for us being spread across the US). As Emily’s volleyball season kicked off and preparations for DjangoCon US escalated, things became purely virtual. I meet with my younger brother fairly regularly to play video games and catch up. I have a weekly call with Jason, which is immensely valuable and refreshing to me. Then I set up a calendar event for monthly meetings with two other friends because we had been drifting a bit. It’s gone well, but I can tell I struggle with time since we start just before I typically go to bed.
I’ve developed and furthered many relationships within my professional career. It’s weird looking at the differences in friendship between those I formed as a kid and those I formed as an adult. If I had to pick one thing that’s missing, it’s that my new friends don’t understand how much of a putz I used to be.
For 2025, I’m hoping to make more friends. Despite that sounding like my lonely 6-year-old self wrote it, I’ve really enjoyed building relationships within my professional circle. It’s something that I know adds to my life and energy. Maybe for the try something new bit, I’ll try to set up a regular catch-up call with some folks.
Beef and Roland
Beef atop Roland licking him while Roland… Licks his chops.
These dang cats. They’ve burrowed their way deep into my soul. It’s to the point that I experience regret when leaving them alone for a couple of days.
Beef atop my shoulders while working.
Beef atop my shoulders while working, again.
Beef atop my shoulders while working, one more time
This year has brought on some new habits. Beef insists on sleeping on my chest for about 30 minutes each night. However, he won’t force his way under the covers. He bats at my face and blanket to get me to lift the covers up so he can crawl under. So weird.
Roland sitting on my lap staring up at me. Probably wanting food.
Roland prowling around a flower bush in our yard.
I would assume Roland hates me based on 90% of his behavior. Except that he comes in by me so I can rub his butt while he flops over and proceeds to rub his face all over the rug. We have a play routine scheduled where if I make coffee, then it’s time to play fetch. He will also come sit on my lap just before a meal, literally no other time. Strange, strange cat, but I love how vocal he is.
Beef atop my shoulders trying to get down, while Roland is on my lap.
Beef atop Emily’s shoulders.
For 2025, maybe we’ll build a catio, so it’s easier to be outside together.
Travel
2024 involved a ton of travel; some of it was even international! I think my favorite trip was Orlando, since that was one of two trips (Westerville being the other) where Emily and I were traveling without significant demands on our time. For 2025, Emily and I need to make a trip somewhere for just ourselves. Maybe even two?! Then in August, I’d really like to attend DjangoCon Africa. We’ll see though!
Orlando, Fl - Universal Studios / Harry Potter World
Me and Emily in front of Hogwarts in Orlando, FL.
Nashville, TN
Emily, her parents and me taking a photo above Broadway Street in Nashville, TN.
Emily, her parents and me taking photo outside the Musicians’ Hall of Fame in Nashville, TN
Work cruise to Cozumel, Mexico / Chichen Itza
Myself with my coworker, Nishant and his wife on a work cruise that stopped in Cozumel, Mexico.
Myself in front of Chichen Itza in Mexico.
A selfie of me and the ocean on the cruise!
Austin, TX
A photo of old and new friends for a joint bachelor, bachelorette party in Austin, TX.
Cancún, Mexico for Wedding 1
The Cancun, Mexico beach at the resort for a wedding that I was the best man for.
The resort’s pool area in Cancún, Mexico.
Wedding 2 and lake trip to northern Wisconsin
Emily and I during formal wedding photos in Wisconsin.
A photo of the family gathered for Grandma’s 60th birthday in northern Wisconsin
Some of the nearby wetlands in northern Wisconsin.
Westerville, OH for Wedding 3
Emily and me taking a photo between a wedding and its reception in Ohio.
Colorado Springs, CO for Wedding 4
Emily and me taking a photo during a wedding in Colorado Springs.
Durham, NC for DjangoCon US
A circle of Django developers chatting about maintaining open-source software at DjangoCon US in Durham, NC.
Sunnyvale, CA for Google Summer of Code Mentor Summit
My badge from Google Summer of Code Mentor Summit in Sunnyvale, CA.
Indianapolis, IN for a concern with Rachell and Dayoung
Rachell, her wife Dayoung, and me enjoying some food before a concert in Indianapolis.
Louisville, KY for volleyball post-season
Emily and I on a couch at a brewery in Louisville, KY.
House
2024 involved a very lengthy window project, but these new windows are really nice. So it was still a win. For 2025, I’d like to do a minor kitchen redesign involving a switch to an induction stove top, an electric oven, and more cabinetry. There’s also a house painting project that we’ve been putting off since 2018, and we have a cable machine to set up in the garage. Maybe the year of “fix it” isn’t quite over?
Health
Toward the end of 2023, I had developed an ear disorder that was a major annoyance. It turns out it was Patulous Eustachian Tube (PET) disorder. It was caused by a nasal steroid spray for allergies. A doctor in Florida had developed a vitamin C based solution that would help the body repair the problematic flap in my ear. The problem is that I had to administer it into my nose at just the right angle, so the solution would drip down the nasal tunnel to my ear, burning all the way there and anywhere else it got. It tasted awful, and I worried it wasn’t helping, but after a few months everything cleared up. It’s returned a few times, but it’s back to my pre-2023 levels, which is outstanding.
For 2025, I want to stay consistent with my exercise. My physical revealed that I am indeed aging and need to allocate more time to it.
Self-improvement
2024 involved a focus on being more aware of other perspectives. Being more involved in initiatives that interact with a global audience sort of requires that. I listened to several audiobooks on related topics:
- “You Just Need to Lose Weight” by Aubrey Gordon
- Ace by Angela Chen
- Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century by Alice Wong
- Unmasking Autism by Devon Price
- Dopamine Nation by Dr. Anna Lembke
I also listened to a few others that are more self-helpy.
- Supercommunicators by Charles Duhigg
- Slow productivity by Cal Newport
- Leading Below the Surface by LaTonya Wilkins
- Drive by Daniel H. Pink
- A Game Plan For Life: The Power of Mentoring by John Wooden
For parts of the year, I experimented with writing daily gratitude and other self-reflection exercises. I think with any self-improvement effort, it’s the practice that matters. It’s something I know I should come back to and try to work into my routine.
For 2025, I hope to continue on my path of strengthening my communication skills and the ability to connect with others. I want to try doing an exercise with some peers to compare my own perceived strengths and flaws with how others perceive them. Not sure though, that feels like it may be asking a bit much of others.
Professional
Django Discord server
Early in 2024, I stopped being a moderator on the Django Discord server. I found that I was only checking the server because I was a moderator. That was different from me being a moderator because I was already there reading the server. That allowed me more time to focus on other things. I really like the direction the server has taken since that time. I’m still active there on the community-based channels, but much less so on the help channels. For 2025, I don’t plan on changing that.
Djangonaut Space
My goal for Djangonaut Space in 2024 was to get it to fly-wheel status, where it was self-sustaining. We’re not there, but we’ve made tremendous progress. The captain role is filled with Stars (past mentees) for the past two sessions, and we’ve had Stars volunteer as session organizers! Tushar, a pilot Djangonaut was a session organizer for Session 2, then Lilian, Priya and Tobe were Session 1 Djangonauts who were session organizers for Session 3.
There’s also the Space Reviewers initiative that Raffaella and I are trying to launch. The goal is to make Django code reviews more accessible to others. Some of the logistics have been a bit bumpy, but nobody ever said space travel was safe!
It’s wild to think about how far Djangonaut Space has come in a year. I was a Navigator in Session 1 with some excellent Djangonauts. Helping onboard others to contribute to the Django Debug Toolbar was an enlightening experience. We identified some things that could be better explained, then did that! It was also fun to have the energy of new folks in the community who wanted to improve things. If you contribute to a library to the point where you’re comfortable looking at the issue list, please reach out to Djangonaut Space and volunteer as a Navigator. You won’t regret it!
For 2025, I’m hoping to see a continuation of last year. I’d love to see a fully Star run session and for the admin team to onboard a new team member. Even if we don’t, the program has been well adopted and is settled on sustainable action.
DEFNA
I’ve learned a lot this past year from being on the DEFNA (Django Events Foundation North America) board. I can rely on all the directors providing quality feedback on various initiatives. At the start of the year, I wanted the board to approve a few public declarations; however, I never pushed them hard enough to get them passed. The reason I let it slip is that, compared to putting on the actual conference, it wasn’t a priority.
The things I tried and failed to do as a director were:
- Publish a list of conference Focus Points for DjangoCon US
- Formalize a Django event grant policy
- Launching Django Contrafact (watch parties of past talks)
I think if my community involvements were lesser, I would have been able to push these over the finish line. That said, I did have some nice wins this year atop my expected duties:
- Drive a process around our traveling mailbox emails
- Better automated and integrated our Django event grant submissions
- Helped facilitate the DjangoCon US Perspectives initiative
- Helped facilitate the hackathon initiative
A fun selfie Velda took of some of the DEFNA board members.
If continue on the board for 2025, I’d like to do a better job of creating interest in the conference for both attendees and conferences. For attendees, the focus would be on the sprints and community teams. I’d love to see user groups and meetups have a dedicated presence at the conference. I’d also like to find a way to amplify the sprints and their energy. Regarding sponsors, I’ve been toying around with the idea of tailoring a pitch for a specific company. This is pretty far out of my wheelhouse, but “try something new.”
Since I was elected to the Django Steering Council for the 6.x series, I will be stepping down from the DEFNA board. I feel the position is extremely important to the community and I think we’d be better off having someone who has the appropriate time and energy to dedicate to it.
DjangoCon US
DjangoCon US continues to be a highlight of my year. This year was different for a few reasons. My two colleagues were meeting for the first time. It was the first year I had several meals and meetings planned out ahead of time. I met several Djangonauts, Navigators and Captains from Djangonaut Space. And I was giving a talk!
From a board member and organizer perspective, I was very pleased with how the event turned out. There were a few mishaps that come to mind for me, mainly cutting Hugo Bessa’s online talk on Django & Celery short and putting too much on Jay Miller’s plate without acknowledgement of him as an organizer. But then there were some pretty cool things to see, like the DjangoCon US Perspectives that came from Jay Miller and Nathan Zeager’s work, and the Hackathon from Doreen Peace Nangira Wanyama, Emmanuel Asuah Danful, Salim A Nuru and Nathan Zeager. We also met as a board and had dinner together, which was very productive and a lot of fun. It appears that I may have formed a DjangoCon US tradition with Peter Grandstaff. We both specifically made time this year to redo a personal recap of the conference at Arcana. I truly appreciate the way his mind works and how understanding he is. Every conversation I have with him is rejuvenating.
From a participant’s perspective, I really enjoyed it. Durham is such a cool city, and the venue was right downtown, making several places available. I love the Django community and how it’s extremely supportive of one another. People genuinely want to help to understand one another. I got to meet several Djangonaut Space people in person for the first time! I also had the opportunity to hang out with my fellow Midwesterner, Rachell and one of my Django role models, Natalia, quite a bit. In fact, coming back from Durham, I was able to sneak in another hour of conversation with Natalia because her gate happened to be right next to mine!
A selfie I took of Natalia and I while we were waiting to board our flights home.
From a speaker’s perspective, it went as well as I could have hoped. I’m not quite sure if I’m cut out for being a speaker. This talk stressed me out a bit. This could be due to a number of factors. 1) I was stressed from the organizer side of things. 2) The topic included a few mistakes on my part, which I harbor some shame about. 3) It’s a personal topic about life that I’m still not 100% sure I’m doing correctly. 4) I was preparing another talk for the Saturday before at the Black Python Devs Leadership Summit. So perhaps I may have bitten off more than I could chew (again). All that said, I thought everything went as well as possible. The AV staff were excellent in helping me out (my brain short-circuited up on stage). Velda was a calming friend who introduced me. I used all the words that I wanted to. I felt like I explained the topic well. And I ended the talk within the timeframe that I expected. Oh, and I didn’t have pit stains when I lifted my hands above my head!
A photo of me all prepped to get on stage for the first time!
Because of my involvement with DjangoCon US and DEFNA, I was asked to be on the Django Chat podcast. Carlton and Will had suggested I join the podcast when we were in San Diego for DjangoCon US 2022, but I didn’t feel like I had anything to say. When they asked this time, I felt pretty good that I would have plenty to talk about. The experience was great, Carlton and Will are really easy going. It’s just a conversation for the guest. Though one of my highlights was seeing Priya post about hearing her name on the podcast!
I 100% expect to be at DjangoCon US 2025. I’m not quite sure of where my involvement will be. I think it’s a safe bet to say that I’ll be involved in the sprints though.
Django Debug Toolbar
The toolbar had a pretty productive year. We saw 96 PRs created in 2024 compared to 56 from 2023. I want to say this is because the project was a participant in Djangonaut Space session 1 and Google Summer of Code. Though those two programs alone didn’t account for the increase in PRs, it caused us to talk about the project more, bring it front of mind, and help facilitate others into producing PRs. Maybe. Either way, it was a fun year!
It was capped off by having all the new maintainers meet for a discussion on the future of the toolbar. It was pretty cool introducing Aman, Elineda and Velda to each other and hearing what they want to do in the future.
In 2025, we need to get 5.0 released properly and drop the alpha tag. My stretch goal is to get the serializable branch merged in, but I’m not in a big rush (yet).
Google Summer of Code
I had submitted the Async Django Debug Toolbar project for Django’s Google Summer of Code program back in 2022. I kept renewing it because, well, I never got around to the work myself. This year a wonderful contributor found it, Aman Pandey, who spearheaded the project. Aman did fantastic. He wanted to learn and grow at every step. I was most impressed, though not by his technical acumen, but rather by his interpersonal communication. After the first month or so of meetings, he realized (without me saying anything) that he was the one with all the updates for our meeting document, and he started preparing it before our check-ins rather than me. It was an indication of his understanding of the team, the work and the realization of what would make us all more effective.
The other cool part of this project was that Elineda, a Djangonaut from Session 1, helped mentor Aman. She was incredibly valuable in providing feedback, reviewing PRs and discussing possibilities.
For 2025, I think I will step back for a bit. However, if someone were to need a support mentor, I would be available.
Django Simple History
I’ve gotten involved with this repository due to my work at AspirEDU. It’s an interesting project, but it’s also a lot of fun to see how dabble does open source. I was initially surprised at the high-quality PRs they put out because I had never seen them around the community before. At this point, it’s simply a lot of fun to engage in the project. I’ve embraced my role as a maintainer on the repo this year, being involved in several PRs and creating a few of my own. For 2025, I hope to stay the course. Maybe I can convince dabble to be a Navigator for a Djangonaut Space session!
Django Commons
Django Commons made a lot of progress this year, which is incredibly exciting for me. I put out a call for help to administrate and direct the project back in May and had 12 responses. I ended up selecting four others, Daniel, Lacey, Ryan, and Storm because they were interested in the people role, which felt like the biggest hurdle for the organization at the time.
We’ve been meeting roughly twice a week to discuss updates, ideas and progress. It’s interesting being on a project with such large, immediate communal aspirations. At times, we have this great speed, and then at others, we move slowly to confirm that our idea is just, viable and something to form a foundation with.
For 2025, I’d like to see us have some changeover at the administrator level just to prove it works. I’d also like to see us onboard some new contributors to projects (I just thought of a monthly meet & greet for maintainers).
Steering Council
This month (December), I was elected to the Django Steering Council for the 6.x release series. I feel tremendously grateful to the community for trusting me to continue the efforts to improve Django. While I have done parts of the roles elsewhere, I haven’t done something exactly like this in the past. My biggest fear is that I’ll do something that unintentionally alienates or harms people. My greatest hope is that I’ll have the opportunity to improve diversity by making the contributing process more accessible.
For 2025, I’ve already written up my goals.
Career
Individual Contributor
There are several things that I want to improve about my company’s project. I was able to make good progress on several of them, such as:
- Standardizing how new backends are stood up and providing a path to automating it
- Supporting historical data for submissions
- Removed several cases of technical debt and legacy logic, including an entire LMS integration
One difficulty here is that I tend to play whack-a-mole with dozens of production app concerns. Looking back at the collection, it’s a lot of small progress made on several facets. The piece that I’m happiest about though is the progress on improving documentation and actual documentation/code around the parts that are simply in my head. It’s been really nice getting concepts onto paper and realizing that there are more efficient ways to do things.
For 2025, I’d really like to refocus on the project that allows us to process data in real-time. I think there are numerous opportunities in that realm, and this past year I found a possible way to do it.
Manager
There’s a lot of room for me to grow here. I don’t think I do a bad job, but I probably can’t do a good job with every personality type yet. There are things about me that help me do what I can as an individual, but those qualities hold me back from leading others at a high level. I think my directness combined with a strong sense of right and wrong falls into this category.
I worked on them in 2024 and have made some progress. I am pleased with myself with my ability to connect at a human level with others, be it direct reports or any other type of mentee / colleague. It’s something I’ve been worried about for years, but I think at this point I can finally put that behind me. I’ve also been learning a lot about how to manage others in my open-source endeavors. While I learn something from everyone, I’ve tried to emulate some behaviors I really like from Jeff, Rachell and Thibaud.
For 2025, I’m pushing myself into areas where I need to become a more effective leader. I hope over the next year I’ve made significant progress and am more satisfied with my work in this domain.
Hobbies
Brewing
I brewed exactly one beer this year. It was an Oktoberfest, and it was delicious. It only lasted a month or so before we emptied the keg, so that was both reassuring and disappointing. I enjoyed the process for the most part, but dang, does it take a lot of time!
A large kettle with the wort for an Oktoberfest. It didn’t last two weeks once it made it to the keg.
For 2025, I think I’ll be brewing a wit soon and then the Oktoberfest in the fall. So maybe a good goal is two beers!
Exercise
I’m starting to think this area is always going to be full of ups and downs. That said, I had a blood test come back that had some mild risk factors in it, so I now have some tangible “get your shit together” motivation. Since then, I’ve been good about doing something physical two times a week. I’m hoping to get it up to five for 2025.
Gaming
This is probably the one thing I do that has no productive value, and that’s simply for entertainment. My brother and I use this to stay in touch and keep tabs on one another. Though there was a two-month period leading up to DjangoCon US where we didn’t play at all, and I missed an entire version update. Not the worst thing in the world, but perhaps I need to say “no” more often. Towards the end of the year, we found that our cousin was interested in joining us, so it’s been great reconnecting with him.
For 2025, I hope things don’t change. It’s something that’s pretty low on my priority list, so it’s most likely to be bumped.
Gardening
This year I didn’t do much of the active gardening (see my professional section for why). I did help harvest things, but I wasn’t the primary waterer this year. We did get a nice harvest of hot peppers, which I supplemented with some store bought jalapeños to make hot sauce again. We ended up with almost two gallons, which is now taking up space in our fridge as several tiny bottles. Once again this year, I turned the vegetable material after straining the sauce into pepper flakes for my father-in-law. I thought it all turned out pretty well, but we’ll see what folks say in the coming months!
The pepper haul from the garden this year!
The kettles full of the pepper brine simmer on the stove top.
The dried remains of the strained pepper material. So good!
Reading
I did not do a good job of reading physical books this year. However, I did listen to a few dozen audiobooks, most of my favorites are in the self-improvement section above.
For 2025, I don’t know how much of this is going to change. Right now, I feel like I’m in a producer stage of my life rather than a consumer. I think that’s a good thing, but it bothers me to not be an active reader.
Writing
For the first time in my life, I posted a blog post every month for an entire year. I’m very pleased with that accomplishment. Looking back at my posts for the year, I’d like to have a few more technical pieces. I am fond of these two that I wrote this year:
I think the biggest factor in my writing is my writing group with Matthias and Sarah. I am curious how larger groups work for others and if we should potentially expand ours. I think we only cancelled one or two out of the possible 26 this past year. However, I’ve heard several community members state they want to write more, and this group is a great way to do that.
For 2025, I hope to keep up my writing cadence with a tinge more technical content. But if there isn’t, that’s fine. I’m sure future Tim has a reason.
Coffee Roasting
This is purely a goal for 2025. I told Emily that I want to try a new hobby for 2025, because, you know, “try something new.” I said I was thinking about finally buying a violin or picking up coffee roasting. She immediately responded, “Coffee roasting. Definitely, coffee roasting.”