Every year I love to look back at the goals I set and see how I performed. It's that time of year again, so here we go.

👩‍❤️‍💋‍👨 marriage

Our goal of reading two books didn't work out very well, as we only got through half of the first one. But it did spark a lot of great conversation.

I feel like conversation was a big theme this year. We spent so much time just talking, connecting, and sharing how we feel in a very honest way. It brought us closer, and I think we're a better couple for it!

We did go to both Suerte and Electric Shuffle, as well as a ton of other great dates. We did day dates like working at a coffee shop, day drinking downtown, and shopping at Magnolia. We also went out dancing a lot this year, and really got back to our roots on the dance floor.

Next year is our ten year anniversary, and we're hoping to do something big to celebrate.

🤝 relationships

I did a great job on this goal, as I definitely spent lots of time building relationships this year. I went out with old Adobe co-workers, played online games with friends that no longer live in Austin, and even started some new friendships that are turning out better than expected!

I also started going to local web development meetups. Getting involved in the community has introduced me to some new people, and made me feel more connected to other developers and companies around town.

🏡 bradgarropy.com

I successfully completed the migration of my website to Remix and Tailwind! It went very smooth except for one issue with caching on Vercel, but I got that all ironed out. I added post tags and related articles, and I've got a pull request up for implementing an RSS feed. All of these features should increase discoverability of my posts from within and outside of my site.

I leaned hard into Remix this year. At work I used it to create the application my team is developing, and I made an internal template that can be quickly cloned as a starting point for new applications. So far it's been a great developer experience for everyone who's used it.

💰 side income

I'm very happy to say that with my sights set high at $5,000 of side income, I just squeaked by that goal! I earned a total of $5,172.15 of side income over the course of the past year. Here is how it breaks down.

Source	Amount
Consulting	$5,017.07
T-Shirts	$107.97
Affiliate Links	$25.27
GitHub Sponsors	$11.00
Apps	$5.84
Twitch	$5.00
Total	$5,172.15

I'm surprised and humbled that the curly bois shirts are still selling. If you purchased one, thank you! I was also surprised that the Murphy app earned some money on the Google Play Store.

But unsurprisingly, the majority of my earnings came from consulting. Huge shoutout to James Quick for providing me multiple opportunities to help him out! I'm already setup for a few consulting jobs next year with Cloudinary, which will get the ball rolling nicely.

👨🏼‍💻 saas

I'll be honest here. I just didn't have the energy, drive, or passion to make it happen this year. While I didn't meet my goal, I also don't consider this a total failure. Despite not making a SaaS application, I surpassed my side income goal!

📺 youtube

I didn't publish any YouTube videos this year, yet somehow my subscriber count grew to 1,471, that's about a 50% increase! But my watch time actually decreased from last year down to 2,195 watch hours.

If I want to get monetized I really need to get going here. Full on tutorials felt daunting to me. Instead I might pivot and try something like Web Dev Cody does, where he just goes over code that he's already written, rather than rehearsing and giving a tutorial.

🦉 duolingo

Not even a question, I kept my Duolingo streak going strong! As of today I've got a 680 day streak. I've been learning a ton of new vocabulary, and really drilling past and future tense. I've been feeling so much more confident talking to others lately, like my wife's family who is visiting from Mexico.

📚 books and games

I didn't read a single book this year, mostly because I felt a little burnt out from reading last year. I did, however, pick up a Nintendo Switch OLED in May and got super sucked into gaming. I explored a bunch of different games, as it was my first time owning a Nintendo system.

• Mario Kart 8
• Super Mario Wonder
• Super Smash Bros Ultimate
• Zelda: Tears of the Kingom
• It Takes Two
• Hades

Mostly I just loved how flexible the Switch was. It could play my favorite indie games, or I could play with the kids. It worked beautifully on an airplane, or on the couch. Not to mention, all of the games felt so easy to pick up and play.

🎬 conclusion

More than anything, this year taught me balance. It taught me that it was okay not to grind too hard, and things still worked out for the best. Sustainability in making continued progress towards my goals is more important than how fast I reach them.

What about y'all? Did you accomplish your goals for 2023? Let me know on Twitter!