[#]: collector: (lujun9972)
[#]: translator: ( )
[#]: reviewer: ( )
[#]: publisher: ( )
[#]: url: ( )
[#]: subject: (2019: Year in review)
[#]: via: (https://jvns.ca/blog/2019-year-in-review/)
[#]: author: (Julia Evans https://jvns.ca/)

2019: Year in review
======

It’s the end of the year again! Here are a few things that happened in 2019.

### I have a business instead of a job!

The biggest change this year is that I left my job in August after working there for 5.5 years and now I don’t have a job! Now I have a [business][1] (wizard zines).

This has been exciting (I can do anything I want with my time! No rules! Wow!) and also disorienting (I can do anything I… want? Wait, what do I want to do exactly?). Obviously this is a good problem to have but it’s a big adjustment from the structure I had when I had a job.

My plan for now is to give myself a year (until August 2020) to see how this new way of existing goes and then reevaluate.

I wanted to write some reflections on my 5 years at Stripe here but it’s been such a huge part of my life for so long that I couldn’t figure out how to summarize it. I was in a much worse place in my career 6 years ago before I started working there and it really changed everything for me.

### !!Con

2019 was [!!Con][2]’s 6th year! It’s a conference about the joy, excitement, and surprise of programming. And !!Con also expanded to the [west coast][3]!! I wasn’t part of organizing the west coast conference at all but I got to attend and it was wonderful.

Running a conference is a ton of work and I feel really lucky to get to do it with such great co-organizers – there have been at least 20 people involved in organizing over the years and I only do a small part (right now I organize sponsorships for the east coast conference).

This year we also incorporated the [Exclamation Foundation][4] which is the official entity which runs both conferences which is going to make organizing money things a lot easier.

### I understand how the business works a little better

Earlier this year I signed up for a business course called [30x500][5] by Amy Hoy and Alex Hillman. They’ve influenced me a lot this year. Basically I signed up for it because I had a business that had made $100,000 in revenue already but I didn’t really understand how the business _worked_ and it felt like it could just evaporate at any point. So $2000 (the cost at the time of 30x500) was worth it to help me understand what was going on.

Amy and Alex both just the other day wrote 100-tweet threads that have some of the ideas that I learned this year in them: [Alex on creating sustainable businesses][6] and [Amy on design][7].

I was hoping to build a system for selling printed zines in 2019 and I didn’t get to it – that’s probably my one concrete business goal for 2020. I tried out Lulu for printing in the hopes that I could experiment with print-on-demand but the quality was awful so it’s going to be a bit more work.

### blog posts and things

In 2019 I:

  * wrote 29 blog posts
  * published 2 [zines][8] (Bite Size Networking, HTTP: Learn Your Browser’s Language) and wrote most of a third
  * published 1 box set of my zines ([Your Linux Toolbox][9], it’s in Real Physical Bookstores!!)
  * did some experiments in interactive SQL/server exercises, which I’m excited about but are sort of on the back burner right now. Maybe I’ll go back to them in 2020!
  * made the same business [revenue][1] as in 2018 (which I was thrilled about)
  * gave 0 talks (which was a goal of mine)



The blog post I’m happiest to have published this year is definitely [Get your work recognized: write a brag document][10]. I’ve seen quite a few people saying that it helped them track their work and it makes me really happy. A bunch of people at my old job adopted it and it’s one of the non-engineering projects I’m most proud of having done there.

Publishing this post about my [business revenue][1] was also important to me – in the past I loved blogging, but I didn’t think it was possible to make a living by explaining computer things online. And I was totally wrong! It is possible! So I think it’s important to tell other people that it’s a possibility.

Having a Real Traditionally Published Book out is also really cool, I could not have imagined [4 years ago][11] that I could go to an actual bookstore and buy the little 16-page zine I wrote about how much I love strace.

### what went well

some things that were good this year:

  * spending time understanding why the business works the way it does instead of just guessing
  * collaborating with many great people on !!Con to do a big thing together
  * I’m happy to have given myself the time/space to do whatever it is I want, even though it’s a big adjustment
  * writing things that help people a little bit with their careers (the brag documents post) is nice



some things that are harder:

  * I used to have a lot of really amazing coworkers at my job, and right now I’m working much more by myself. I definitely miss having so many great people right there to talk to all the time.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

via: https://jvns.ca/blog/2019-year-in-review/

作者：[Julia Evans][a]
选题：[lujun9972][b]
译者：[译者ID](https://github.com/译者ID)
校对：[校对者ID](https://github.com/校对者ID)

本文由 [LCTT](https://github.com/LCTT/TranslateProject) 原创编译，[Linux中国](https://linux.cn/) 荣誉推出

[a]: https://jvns.ca/
[b]: https://github.com/lujun9972
[1]: https://jvns.ca/blog/2019/10/01/zine-revenue-2019/
[2]: https://bangbangcon.com
[3]: https://bangbangcon.com/west
[4]: https://exclamation.foundation/
[5]: https://30x500.com/academy/
[6]: https://twitter.com/alexhillman/status/1209252239501647874
[7]: https://twitter.com/amyhoy/status/1209693440872603651
[8]: https://wizardzines.com
[9]: https://jvns.ca/blog/2019/10/21/print-collection-of-my-first-7-zines/
[10]: https://jvns.ca/blog/brag-documents/
[11]: https://jvns.ca/blog/2015/04/14/strace-zine/
