I heard a new voice on the radio, “Fleet commander, what are your orders?” Static. My comms flashed with battle updates, we were losing ships fast. “Fleet commander, please respond.”

My heart sunk. I was training to become a skirmish commander, but this fleet needed someone with hardened battle experience. My finger twitched on the comm link. Should I take command? Then over the radio, “This is Alex, I’m taking command until Khun responds. All remaining units form up on me.” His callsign flashed in comms. I realized, I’d been holding my breath and exhaled.

I checked my shields and punched warp to get back in the fight.

We handle year ends differently. Becca is downstairs watching a show, I’m upstairs reflecting (brooding) over the past year and planning (dreaming) of the next. 2021 was an interesting year full of many accomplishments, disappointments, and challenges. Here are some of them–mostly for my own processing and future remembrance.

After reading over this, let me reiterate: this is almost entirely for my own personal year end processing, you probably won’t get much out of it.

I’ve been reading through the parables of Jesus that describe the kingdom of the heavens, so I can better understand this kingdom I’m a part of. The parable of the yeast always interested me as a way to explain the kingdom: yeast is very small but it permeates and transforms the dough. As a winemaker, I think about yeast more than the average person. In wine, it does the same: a tiny amount permeates and transforms the whole into something new.

Over the last year and a half, I’ve stayed mostly quiet on the social front regarding the pandemic–mostly because I saw the fruitless and frustrated nature of these encounters, and I wanted no part of it. At this point, I’ve had conversations with people with a lot of varied opinions, the data has had time to settle, and I have clarified my own thoughts on the matter.

But that is not enough reason to enter the social media feeding frenzy. The reason for writing this is that the name of Jesus is being mocked and humiliated because of the acts and public words of those who claim to follow Him. If Christians are mocked for their sacrificial giving, generous hearts, recklessly self-endangering themselves to serve others, that would be good. In this country, that is not currently the case. Instead, Christians are publicly known for their blatant hatred for those they disagree with, obsession with self proclaimed freedoms, and disregard for their communities.

That is not the Jesus I know.

Several people in my life have pulled me aside and asked me, “What can I do to become a developer? Can I do it without getting a degree?”

I usually have a rambling unhelpful answer readily available. When one of my brothers asked me, I came up with some more systematic answers, but it didn’t seem like enough. Then a good friend of mine from college reached out, and I couldn’t bring myself to fire off a bunch of useful thing to self-learn without some context and structure to it–because I believe he’ll actually do it.

Most people could become software developers if they wanted to.