My Year in Review

This past year was a time of steady growth for me – both personally and well as in my work.

Melissa and I settled ourselves in Williamsburg, Brooklyn after having moved to the city in November of 2009. Moving north from South Carolina at just the beginning of the harshest season of the year added an extra jolt of adventure.

Melissa started a job on January 1, 2010 as an administrative assistant in the family office of an investor. I continued working as a freelance designer.

We became more and more settled in our community – new friends, a new church, new work contacts, and new friendships through Redeemer and Gotham Fellowship.

At church I helped in various ways to carry out a simple new website design, several blood drives, a hymns concert with Sandra McCracken and Red Mountain Church, a neighborhood trash clean-up, and another concert with Andrew Peterson and Melanie Penn. I’ve fallen in love with the small church planting environment and really can’t see myself thriving in any other scenario. The coming year looks even more exciting.

In September I began as a fellow in the Gotham Fellowship program. The goal of the program is to help young professionals grow in their personal application of the Christian gospel, gain an understanding of and appreciation for a range of Christian writing and thought (Lewis, Edwards, Wright, Owen, Bonhoeffer, etc…), and deeply integrate our faith and work. We went on a retreat to Princeton Seminary in September, and will be returning in just a few days for another in-depth weekend. The content, reflection, and mentorship has been hugely formative.

While the nature of my actual projects didn’t change too much throughout the year, I feel like I developed an improved focus and clarity in dealing with my day-to-day work. Working alone in our apartment every day gave me the headspace to experiment with different ways of breaking down projects and responsibilities. The most practically impacting article I read this year was Mark McGuiness’ The Key to Creating Remarkable Things on the 99% blog. I also implemented Things for Mac and the amazingly helpful little app, SelfControl.

Towards the end of the year, I was able to give more attention to NoiseTrade.com, a project I’ve been working on in one way or another for almost 5 years. Derek Webb shared the essence of the idea over coffee at Jammin’ Java in Columbia, SC in March of 2006. After several fits and starts and changes of plans we finally launched the site in July of 2008. Now after another 2 1/2 years we’re now seeing the beginning of what I hope will be a growth phase – with a brand new HTML version of the site launching sometime in Spring of 2011.

I’m deeply thankful for the new friends, environment, and opportunities of 2010.

Goals for 2011:

1) Leave time for reflection and response.

2) Distill and practically apply what I read and hear.

3) Never say no to an opportunity out of fear.

4) Say no to many opportunities so I can focus on doing a few things well.

5) Read. Read. Read. Stay Curious.

6) Break through the boring execution stage of projects. Finish what I start.

7) Love my wife well.