For the past 2 years, I’ve committed myself to specific goals for the year to come. Most people call them New Year’s Resolutions. Heck, I probably even referred to them as “resolutions” too. But the more I thought about it, the more it dawned on me that a “resolution” felt more like a fix for something — something that didn’t go well in the previous year. Think weight loss (everyone makes this resolution at least once in their life) or a dedication to be more focused.

Mine have been more of the bucket list variety. The first was completing an Ironman. The second, writing a book.

Both felt almost too big initially, but ultimately led to opportunities and lifestyle changes I would’ve never expected once finished. So naturally, with 2014 winding down, the question becomes “what’s the goal for 2015?”.

And the answer is…I don’t know.

It doesn’t mean I’m not going to do anything. In fact, it probably means the opposite. I’m just not going to set out with a specific goal in mind. If halfway through something, I want to stop and do something else, so be it.

I remember during my training for the Ironman (9 months total), I constantly thought about what I would do with my free time when it was over. Every time my alarm went off at 5am, I thought about what it would feel like to get another 2 hours of sleep. It was endless. Nine months was a long time to have those thoughts and, perhaps, why I was so well positioned to write and launch the book (I had 9 months to think about what was next and how to accomplish it).

Always having your sights set on the future can wear on you though.

Without those feelings now, I’m going to let 2015 take me wherever it does. I don’t have any expectations financially or professionally. I’m going to do my best to make the most out of every moment and appreciate more of the small things. It’s so easy to skip over the small things and in many cases, the small things are actually the best things. And we don’t realize it until they’re gone.

2014 was a great year in all. Here are a few of the events that stand out the most:

• my wife and I welcomed our son, Cruz
• my wife and I celebrated our 4 year anniversary
• wrote a book, Build a Ruby Gem
• provided a free email course on building a Ruby gem to 1,218 people
• connected with 2,645 people through my newsletter
• built a funnel optimization service for bloggers selling products
• published 24 articles
• saw Sucker Punch downloaded over 225k times
• celebrated Sucker Punch being integrated in to Rails
• made my first commit to Rails (even if it was small!)
• traveled to Jackson Hole, WY
• built a pay-to-view video platform with a few friends
• built a performance management system
• renovated my kids’ bathroom
• built a deployment system for PipelineDeals and supporting services that I’m very proud of
• built a staging server management application
• built 3 chrome extensions, the latter being my first React app
• started a weekly tech gathering at a local co-working space
• stopped push email notifications on all my devices (strongly recommended)
• saw Defriend Notifier be used by 30,128 people
• started exploring other programming languages, specifically Go and Elixir

I’m excited for 2015!