One of my favorite communication tools is the the retrospective, as it’s a nice way to snapshot what was accomplished during a specific period of time. Today is my 41st birthday, thus a perfect time to reflect back on the past year.

Github Commits

What I did:

  • Welcomed the beautiful Eleanor Jane Judge into the world on March 19th
  • Left my job on March 31st, closing the chapter on the company I cofounded long ago
  • Celebrated my son Jack’s 7th birthday, my son Caelin’s 5th birthday and my daughter Evie’s 3rd birthday
  • Walked 781 miles over 1.6M steps
  • Ran 94 miles
  • Rode 3,881 miles
  • Built Trackernaut to help me aggregate and report on the data above
  • Helped the good folks at Earth Class Mail re-kick their business post bankruptcy by launching a new marketing site, creating a new customer acquisition strategy, cutting over to new billing, customer support, and content management systems, plus other growth oriented projects
  • Helped coach baseball and soccer (2x)
  • Taught 11 kids how to ride a bike with my friend Peter (I’ve dubbed this program Kids Love Bikes)
  • Created Bright Labs, Inc. in order to start working on Bright, a new product to help SaaS companies quickly understand and optimize customer acquisition, recurring revenue and more (beta testing started in January — woot woot!)
  • Rode in the Banff GranFondo, North Shore Century, Apple Cider Century, and Levi’s GranFondo
  • Vacationed in Alberta, Canada with my family and friends (we loved it — felt like Colorado, but with less people and more bears)
  • Celebrated the 11th anniversary with my amazing wife Erin. We also hit a steady cadence in date nights, averaging one per week.
  • Skied in Breckenridge, CO with my boys
  • Visited San Francisco for the SaaStr Annual conference in February. I met and reconnected with a lot of great people.
  • Built a computer with my boys

What I didn’t do:

  • Apply to YC. I started putting the intro video together and wasn’t happy with how I was communicating the value of Bright. I started reading up on their preference for multiple founders (which makes sense) and decided to punt on the submission. Looking back, this was a mistake as you never know what could happen. The rule of showing up.
  • Spend time with my parents. I saw my mother a 3–4 times, but didn’t get a chance to see my father. My father hasn’t even met my two daughters. This is a wrong that I’m going to right.

A friend once told me that he had always loved March fourth because the date is so expressive. I’m proud of the past year, and excited for this next year. March forth!

Bike On Lft

Note: This post was originally published on Medium.