Go back to my #blogvent calendar
Every year I do a retrospective, and since I plan on really relaxing over the holiday, I figured I’d do that thinking work today. Here are all my retrospectives for the last 7 years if you’re interested: 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024.
For 2025 I wanted to let myself be seen. I said that I was “cat-like in my need for attention.” I both want to be watched but not perceived, mainly due to fear of judgment. I’m happy to report though that, even through this one year, that fear has gone down a bit. And as I’ve gotten older I think I’m starting to care less about what people think of me and more about whether or not I’m proud of myself, my choices, and the way I spend my time. Our actions make us who we are, afterall. Here’s what went well, and not so well this year.
On a general note, this year I started working at Observable, which is a data visualization company. As of right now I’m the Director of Research. I really like the team and think data visualization is one of the most impactful ways we can tell stories, especially since it’s a blend of art and science. It’s been wonderful helping build out this product.
This was a really fun year of writing and performing skits. My husband, Jason, used them as “commercial breaks” for the dev game show series he did this year. The ones we did this year weren’t actual commercials for companies but really fun skits that me, Annie, Joel, and Jason wrote and performed in together. You can see all of them here. The writing and shooting days were absolutely hilarious and so much fun!
Last year I wrote about co-authoring a book, and this year it came out! It’s called *Usability for the World: Building Better Cities and Communities.* This was one of those life checklist items for me. I love talking about community, I love looking at research, I love writing, and I’ve always wanted to write a book. I helped write the first chapter, which was a literature review of human-centered design studies that have been used around the world to improve community building and engagement. We wrote the book with the designers, planners, and policymakers; to give them tools and inspiration to help them build better communities.
Getting to participate in this was really incredible. The majority of the writing was done last year, but I helped wrap up edits at the beginning of this year and it was published in May. I have a copy sitting on my shelf in my office and it makes me so proud. It definitely made me want to write more and gave me the confidence that if I can write even part of a chapter, which took months of review, editing, re-writes, and more research, then I can definitely write a book. A whole book is bigger but doable.
I got back in to conference speaking a bit last year at a local conference and then spoke at RenderATL this year. I was the second to last talk on the final day, so figured the room would be pretty empty, but it was mostly full! I talked about how data visualization has tangible impacts in the world around us. From epidemiology to policymaking, data visualization helps us tell complex stories in a way people can understand. And because of that, it’s important that we understand the language of data visualization so we can make better decisions. I had a good time speaking and was proud of myself for getting back out there and speaking.
I also did a couple podcasts. I spoke with on the ConTejas podcast about how we can incorporate nature into product design, and on The Work Item podcast about being an effective user researcher. I really enjoy being on podcasts and felt very thankful to get to be a part of these. It was also good practice for putting myself out there more.
I’m not sure why I felt so much more proud of what I accomplished this year than in previous years. Maybe it’s because the things I’m doing feel more aligned with how I want to spend my time, so even if I don’t get to everything I don’t feel bad about what I did.
It also might be, counterintuitively, that I’m doing more this year than I did last year. I have some side projects that are pretty active, in addition to my hobbies, and maybe doing stuff is feeling in the gap where I used to just think, and analyze, and worry, and lament.
Maybe it’s because I’m getting older and giving less of a shit. I actually do think that’s playing a pretty big part. I know how I like spending my time. I know how I don’t like spending my time. And I’ve started saying no to things that make me spend my time in a way I dislike, but I don’t feel bad about saying no anymore.
I also think I made sure that a good portion of how I spent my time this year was not on a computer. I was drawing or making something or gardening. I do think that stepping away from the screen was really important for me to get my mind to be more calm and focused in the long run.
Some of the other things I worked on this year that I was proud of, and that I shared a bit were my garden, my ceramics, and my writing. I designed and planted an entire section of my garden this year and am so excited to see how it turns out this spring and summer. It looked good this year and I have really high hopes for next year. I worked on my ceramics this year, earlier in the year, and need to pick it back up again. I always go in fits and starts with the ceramic work because it takes a lot of prep and clean up. I did better with my writing, too. Not just the book but I’ve been doing this blogvent and I did work on my newsletter, although not as much as I would have liked. I also still run a nature education program at my local park, and doing this always makes me feel connected to community and like I’m doing something that matters.
I spent a lot of time this year meeting up with friends and really making an effort to expand my community. It can be hard and it’s easy to get complacent, especially when you’ve finished a whole work day and just want to turn your brain off.
But I made more of an effort to go out, to spend time with people, to try new things, and I want to do more of that next year. Every time I do that I feel so much better, I just have to get over that first bit of inertia.