Congratulations! If you’re reading this, you survived 2020! I’ve been doing these annual year-in-review posts every year for over a decade, and I think this is the first one that’s not especially cheerful. I thought about not bothering this year, but decided I might as well keep the habit going as a record of my year that was.

While the year got off to a reasonable start, things went way off the rails in mid-March when it became clear COVID-19 was going to run out of control unless urgent measures were taken. Around that time I started working from home, and our son had to move to remote-learning. My wife is in the healthcare field, so she had no such option. While we dealt with sky-high anxiety for much of the year, along with some scares, I’m still extremely thankful my family is safe and healthy!

I had hoped that not having a daily commute would give me more free time, but what ended up happening was I had to work more, including many late nights and weekends. I noticed the same thing happening with co-workers as well. This was not always by choice, since we were under tremendous pressure to deliver for multiple projects. I suspect there was an expectation that since everyone was working from home, they could easily handle the extra workload. I was definitely noticing signs of burnout by the end of the year, so I hope everyone was able to take some restful time off at the end of the year!

I complained about my fitness last year, and this year wasn’t much better. Like most people, I gained a bunch of weight and didn’t get much exercise. The treadmill still isn’t fixed either. Maybe 2021? On the plus side, we probably walked around the neighborhood more times in 2020 than we had since moving into our house 16 years ago. That minimal exercise is better than nothing!

I still enjoy playing the Magic: The Gathering card game now and then on MTG Arena (on PC), but haven’t played any tournaments in a game store since earlier in the year (before in-store play was totally shutdown) when I participated in a prerelease event for a new set. This event was at the new store started by one of the regulars at my old game stores. In a surprising turn of events, my old game store that closed last year actually sprang back to life during the Summer. I’m pleased that both stores have managed to stay afloat, and I do what I can to support them.

In 2020 I also dabbled in a new hobby: building and painting Warhammer miniatures! I didn’t spend as much time as I would have liked on this, but the time I did spend was relaxing and fun. On the subject of painting, we also attended an acrylic painting class for my wife’s birthday. All three of us painted a Christmas scene on canvas, and they all turned out pretty well.

My Magic card unboxing / gameplay YouTube channel is still going strong. It reached 11.7K subscribers in 2020 and racked up another 1.4 million views. I’m honestly surprised I was able to keep it going, but I think working on that and some of my other personal projects kept me from turning into a complete nervous wreck. The ad revenue is pretty low, but with support from patrons (via Patreon) I’m able to mostly cover the costs of running the channel. That became a little more challenging by the fourth quarter, so I had to make some changes that will hopefully keep things on solid footing for 2021 and beyond.

My second YouTube channel (Funko Pop-themed, started in May 2018) is pretty much dead at this point. I put together a few videos in 2020, but didn’t have the time or motivation to do much more than that. That channel reached 1.3K subscribers, which will probably end up being its peak.

I could pretty much cut and paste my comments about my fiction writing efforts for 2020 from the previous year. Nothing new on this front. I didn’t have the time or motivation!

Last year I again took part in the Goodreads Reading Challenge. I had grand plans, but then the pandemic happened and my attention span for leisure-reading promptly vanished. Here’s the sorry list for 2020:

Fool Moon by Jim Butcher
The Cleaner by Mark Dawson

At the moment I have a couple of fun reads I need to get back to. I’m reading a history of the Sierra game company (The Sierra Adventure: The Story of Sierra On-Line by Shawn Mills) and the second John Milton thriller by Mark Dawson (Saint Death). I should wrap those up in the next month or two.

Now for some stats:

2020 Stats:

Sales for my iOS, Mac, and PC apps were pretty similar to 2019 (i.e. low). However, I did much better with working on updates, releasing 3 for the Lite and paid iOS versions of Bonsai Album, 2 for Story Tracker iOS, and 1 for Story Tracker Mac. These were all a significant amount of work, but what I learned can be used when I work on some long-awaited updates for my remaining apps. Development expenses were thankfully not significant in 2020, other than time. As I’ve found with previous years, my app sales are typically seasonal. There’s usually a burst around the first quarter followed by a gradual decline for the remainder of the year. To attempt to reverse this trend, I temporarily reduced prices of my iOS apps and permanently reduced the price of the Mac and PC versions. The result? I sold more units, but made about the same amount of revenue. So much for that idea!

My bonsai hobby was a bit miserable in 2020. I thought I was all set with my remaining trees, which are all tropical and typically the easiest to maintain and keep alive. I kept them going throughout the year, only to have a few die near the end of the year. I’m not sure if it was the early cold snap that did it, or briefly neglecting them during a particularly busy time, but the end result is the same. We didn’t visit any botanic gardens in 2020, though perhaps we should have?

I grew a bunch of vegetables in the garden, including tomatoes, peppers, beans, cucumbers, and zucchini. Despite planting them late, we still got a decent crop. The peppers were the only veggies that didn’t do that well. I’ve also continued to plant giant sunflowers in the veggie garden, and also in some self-watering pots. Those are always fun to look at.

All our well-laid travel plans were pretty much a shambles by March. We were supposed to go on a Spring Break cruise, and visit Isle Royale National Park in Michigan during Summer, but both trips were cancelled. Instead, we spent a cautious week in Door County, Wisconsin, and spent some time at the beachside hotel in Illinois Beach State Park. While we wore our masks and dined outdoors, we were shocked by the behaviour of so many people who roamed around and dined indoors as if it was just like any other Summer. This behaviour was the worst in Wisconsin. No wonder hospitals around the country are at capacity and the infection rate and death toll continue to climb exponentially!

So that was 2020. It wasn’t great for us, but could’ve been far worse. While I have a bunch of goals I’d like to accomplish in 2021 (lose the excess pandemic weight, read more, and travel more), I’ll just be enormously thankful to have a safe and healthy family, and hope that the U.S. and world at large finally puts an end to this nightmarish pandemic.

I hope you and yours made it through the year, and I wish you the best for 2021 and beyond. Happy New Year!

Tags: apps, Bonsai, fiction, Funko Pop, goals, Magic the Gathering, New Year, travel, writing, YouTube

It’s hard to believe, but it’s now 2020! And just as I’ve done every year for the past decade, it’s time to take a look back at 2019 with my annual year-in-review post.

Overall, 2019 was a decent year for me, even with its challenging times (the day job, especially!).

Fitness-wise I regressed terribly, due to not making the time to exercise enough, and not getting our treadmill fixed. That’s on my to-do list for 2020 😉 Despite that, I’m still reasonably healthy, albeit with the usual aches and pains of age.

Last year we lost another beloved family pet. Our old cat (15 years) had been kicking around for several years now with poor eyesight, no purr, some strange nerve issues, and at least 3 close brushes with death, one of which we think might have been a stroke. The latter event finally put an end to his outdoor adventures, since he had no further desire to go outside. In his final few weeks he seemed to be more affectionate than usual, right up until his last moments. My wife and son witnessed the end and knew he was gone before they even took him to the vet. He leaves behind a family who will greatly miss him, along with two other cats that occasionally seem to wonder where he went. Hopefully they will stick around for a good many years yet!

I still enjoy my Magic: The Gathering card game hobby, though I haven’t played in any tournaments since last summer when my local game store closed down. That was a tough blow, especially since there are no closer stores that I enjoy visiting. It’s the 2nd store that’s closed since I’ve started playing! I still play online via MTG Arena (on PC), but it’s not quite the same as playing face-to-face. Recently a new game store has opened further afield, started by one of the guys I used to play against in tournaments over the years. I’m hoping to at least be able to attend prerelease events there in the coming year.

My Magic card unboxing / gameplay YouTube channel is still around, surpassing 7000 subscribers in 2019. It has had over 6 million minutes watched since I started it in July 2017, and over 1.2 million views. I still find these numbers staggering! With strong support from patrons (via Patreon) and modest ad revenue, the channel mostly covers its costs. I’m hoping it’ll continue to grow this year, despite the challenging and ever-changing landscape that is YouTube.

My second YouTube channel (started in May 2018) is another unboxing one related to Funko Pop figures. Aside from the unboxings, I also typically add some silly skits (with special effects) in each episode. That channel passed 1.2k subscribers last year, though it still has a long way to go to reach the minimum monetization thresholds. While this channel is a lot of fun, I’ve started to neglect it lately due to lack of time. Thankfully views haven’t dropped to zero yet, so the YouTube algorithm must still be promoting my older videos!

As with 2018, my fiction writing was non-existent. I simply didn’t have the time or motivation to get back into it. The only way that’s likely to change is if I wind down my YouTube channels, along with the ongoing work on my apps. I feel a bit sad about this, since I’ve spent a good many years of my life wanting to be a writer, yet making little progress.

Last year I again took part in the Goodreads Reading Challenge, but ended up miles from my goal. My reading was exclusively in eBook form. Here are my (paltry) reads for 2019:

Fire Water by Domino Finn
Death March by Domino Finn
Shadow Deal by M. L. McKnight

Can you tell I like to read Urban Fantasy?

Now for some stats:
2019 Stats:

My iOS, Mac and PC app sales continue to decline. I only released 3 app updates last year, including one for Bonsai Album PC, and updates for the Lite and paid versions of the iOS version. I’ve been struggling to update my apps since the iPhone X release, since there are now a whole slew of new iPhones and iPads with different screen variations. It didn’t help that my old Mac was no longer supported by the development tools, and I had to scrape together funds for a brand new Mac mini this year. Now that I’ve got the new Mac and have spent a bunch of time on the Bonsai Album iOS updates (released last week), I’m finally in good shape to get to work on updating my remaining apps. If only the screenshot automation tools worked and I didn’t have to manually take several hundred screenshots for each app in multiple languages! Since revenue was way down and expenses were way up (hello new Mac!), 2019 was a bad year for my apps. From past experience, updates unfortunately don’t move the needle on sales either. And people wonder why my apps don’t get updated very frequently these days!

Like 2019, my bonsai hobby pretty much just consists of keeping my remaining trees alive. I’m down to a handful of tropical trees, with the rest having perished due to harsh winters or pests. I didn’t attend any bonsai shows, though we did visit Morton Arboretum several times to see the magnificent Autumn colours.

I spent a fair bit of time in the garden this year, growing the usual selection of veggies (tomatoes, peppers, peas, beans, cucumbers, and zucchini). We had some crop failures, including the peas, beans, and peppers. I suspect that was due to planting them so late. I didn’t bother with potatoes this time around either (too much work). Still, there’s nothing like veggies picked fresh from the garden!

Last year was another good year for travel. In addition to our trips back and forth to Michigan (including one work trip for training), we also went on a great American road trip with my parents! I visited Canada for the first time, driving to Niagara Falls and doing all the touristy stuff there, including visiting the town of Niagara on the Lake and the nearby fort. Back in the US, in Michigan we visited the Motown museum, Ford Piquette Avenue plant, and Frankenmuth. We also spent some time touring Niagara Falls on the US side, Old Fort Niagara, the Amanda Gish B&B in Elizabethtown PA, the chocolate museum in Hershey PA, the Civil War battleground town of Gettysburg, the Historic (and haunted!) 1757 Fairfield Inn, Harpers Ferry WV, George Washington’s estate in Mount Vernon VA, and the Frank Lloyd Wright architectural marvel that is Fallingwater, in rural Pennsylvania.

So that was my 2019. Not half bad! I’m long past setting New Year’s resolutions, but I would like to exercise a great deal more this year, and read a bunch more books than I managed last year.

I hope everyone had a great year, and I wish you all the best for 2020. Happy New Year!

Tags: apps, Bonsai, fiction, Funko Pop, goals, Magic the Gathering, New Year, travel, writing, YouTube