My 2025 Github skyline. I think this says that the week I committed the least code was at the company offsite, which I guess makes sense.

2025 has been … well, it has been one of the years of all time, I can say that. Personally and professionally, I have achieved a number of my goals. The wider world? I’m not sure I even have the words to describe how I feel about … everything, and I live in Washington, DC, the center of everything, so I’ve theoretically had a lot of time and energy to devote to figuring out how to talk about it. I still can’t.

So I’m sorry, but I won’t. It feels like an abdication of responsibility to not, but please know that it’s not me saying that everything is fine, but that I just don’t feel equipped to face the enormity of everything on a little blog about Python and Javascript. And if this feeling doesn’t resonate with you, please go read some news. The Guardian, Al Jazeera, and ProPublica are good places to start.

Okay, we’re back? We’ve read all news reporting published in the past year? Great. We can now move on.

My personal year in review

At the beginning of last year I set a few professional goals:

  • Get promoted
  • Apply to speak at 12 conferences

The first goal, “get promoted,” was not a “good” goal, in the sense that it’s not a goal I have control over. I can do as much as possible to try to put myself in a good position to get promoted, by taking on more ambitious projects that align with my company’s career ladder, by putting myself forward and “managing up,” etc,. but ultimately, whether this goal happens or not is not up to me.

The good news is I got promoted in March, which meant I could coast for the remaining 9 months of the year. (I promise this is a joke, in case my manager is reading this.)

The second goal, “apply to speak at 12 conferences,” was a goal that I had complete control over. And I applied to 16 conferences, so I suppose I did alright.

Of those 16 applications, 5 were accepted, 5 were rejected, and 6 are still pending. This is definitely not me right now:

A woman morosely sitting by the phone, just waiting for it to ring But for real if you run one of these conferences, get back to me, ok?

Those were the only professional goals I set, but I suppose I hit a few other milestones:

  • In addition to the conferences I applied for, a few folks reached out and asked me to participate in things, so in 2025, I gave a total of 10 talks, podcast/panel appearances, and guest lectures. This is fun. People should reach out to me more.

  • I published 39 blog posts this year (not all of which were meta-posts about Jekyll, as much as it feels like it). This one will make 40, and will probably be my last post of the year.

  • Oh, I (and four other women) started a nonprofit. Minor detail. Women and Gender eXpansive Coders DC is officially a 501(c)(3), thanks to a lot of paperwork and help from a pro bono legal team that we look forward to publicly thanking as soon as our bank account/donation infrastructure is set up.

    As a woman in the tech world I cannot stress enough how important it is to me to have access to a community of people who look like me. Work has a lovely ERG that I’m part of, but I’m grateful to also have this access to a community outside of work. And you know what they say – if you can’t find a community, start your own. Do they say that? They should.

    A lot of the energy of 2025 was sucked up by the actual logistics of starting a nonprofit, but we hosted a number of career events, brunch and dinner socials, Craft n Crush events, and a very cool book club where the author joined us for the last session. I taught a session on the command line (with help from two co-organizers/TAs who I couldn’t have done without) and organized a livecoding session where we made music with Hydra. I’m already looking forward to what we will do in 2026.

My goals for next year

A woman writing intentions in her journal

I’m not aiming to get promoted in 2026. People at my company usually stay at my level for at least another year, so this is reasonable. This gives me the space to focus on other goals.

One thing I really want to get better at is measuring the impact of my work. This is obviously a great thing to do for one’s own career, because putting “I built a feature that made the company one miiiiillion dollars” on your resume or annual review is more impressive than “I closed some tickets.” But I think it’s also a useful skill in general, because knowing impact means I’m working on the right things.

One lucky break for me is that I won a drawing for an O’Reilly book at Techbash and chose The Product-Minded Engineer. Hopefully this book contains a few tips. I’d be grateful for any other thoughts readers might have on this topic.

My other goal is to speak at four in-person conferences. I realize this is not fully under my control, but I do have some levers. I can make sure I’m applying for in-person (not just virtual) conferences, continue to iterate on my talks, and network with other successful speakers. And if you are reading this and run an in-person conference, you can invite me to give a talk :)

That’s it for this year. Thanks for reading. Please, donate to your local mutual aid groups, volunteer somewhere to make the world a little better, and be excellent to each other.