A lot of bad happened in 2020, and a lot of 2020 Review blog posts will talk about those bad things. I’m not going to focus on the bad in this post. I’m trying to focus on my mental health and happiness, which means I will be trying to find the good in things. I’ll let someone else focus on the bad.

All in all, when I look back on 2020, I think it was a pretty good year for our family. After two years of trying to get pregnant, we are lucky enough to be welcoming Baby K into the world in March! Thankfully the pregnancy has gone pretty well, and my wife has remained relatively healthy.

As a side effect of the pandemic, Nutanix banned travel for almost the entirety of the year. Not traveling does mean I missed out on going to Malta and France, but I also didn’t have to go to Vegas twice like I usually do! HUGE WIN! I also dislike flying, so it was nice not having to fly very much last year. I think this is the longest I’ve gone without flying since I was in my teens.

My day to day honestly didn’t change that much with COVID, aside from the mask-wearing and not seeing friends, that is. I already work from home 100% of the time, so there wasn’t much adjustment to my workload. I saw an increase in the number of meetings with people at the corporate office, but they quickly realized how unnecessary all the extra meetings were.

I spent a lot more time with my wife because neither of us was running around all the time, and I wasn’t traveling. When she stopped working in 2019, we struggled a bit getting used to always being around each other, but 2020 helped us figure out how that would work for us, and I think we’re in a good place now. We both know the signs of when the other needs alone time, and we’re able to give them the space they need.

Journaling and keeping a notebook has always been something I’ve done on and off, but I can finally say that in the last several months of 2020, I was able to turn it into a daily habit. You’ll find random doodles, thoughts, architecture designs, lists, and a lot of other things in my notebook. For most people, the notebook would be mostly gibberish, but for me, it makes sense.

In 2021 I’m looking forward to welcoming our little one into the world, a year of hopefully creating more than I consume, and a year of positivity.