17. swim across the Long Island Sound (33x33)

... almost.

For Johnny's 30th birthday (on December 26th) we did a polar bear plunge! This will count for the moment... because it is swimming in the LIS. I still want to swim the race though.

22. pay off 1 of 8 loan debts (33x33)

not gonna lie, my family absolved me of 5 of the 8 debts I owe this year with the hopes that I'll put it towards the federal loans in arrears and that I'll get out more often. It doesn't really count as "paying" off the debts. But there are still two with sallie mae and one with the department of education. The two with sallie mae are actually seven separate loans (one of which is at 8.5% interest). I'll tackle one of those in particular this year.

With this gift, along with my promotion, I should be able to put a dent into my debt.

indentured servitude sucks. no one can ever fully express exactly the weight of the loans to someone with stars in their eyes for advancing their education though.

31. earn a promotion (33x33)

In October of last year I was told I'd be part of a different task on the project I had been working on since May. I would be working on a task called, Scenarios. A requirement scenario document is comprised of a few components: a business synopsis (how the business processes a claim in words), a process model (a representation of the artifacts that have been written in order for business system to function), and a process architecture model (a representation of the business service hierarchy specific to the scenario). The contract was fairly vague and didn't actually describe the components, except that 36 were due by the end of the contract year. After drafting a few versions of the scenario components and developing templates and instructions for creating scenarios, it was already December and a draft was due to the project managers by the second week of January. Although not the official team lead of the scenarios team, I took the initiative and a leadership role.

To recap the major push:

John M got sick, Sanyog got sick, Caitlyn got sick, Jessica got sick, Anna got sick, Omar got sick, Sarah got sick, Will got sick and then his dog got sick. Karin broke her knee, again. Stuart, Justyn, Chad, Charles, Karin, Ross, Orest, John M & B, Caitlyn, Will, Jessica, Sarah, and Josiah took vacation for the holidays. Our Subject Matter Experts for review were redirected back to their work or got sick. Sanyog was made team lead for Awards, requiring a third of his time. Stuart, Ross, Justyn, and Caitlyn were redirected back to their work streams this week. Jessica's computer broke. There was snow, ice, and metro delays.

And we got it done. There were 108 working documents: 36 individual scenario documents, 36 scenario process models, and 36 process architecture models. Each of those documents were drafted, reviewed for internal scenario content, reviewed for consistency across the group, and reviewed for grammar.

There were only 21 working days to coordinate and execute this effort. The master scenario document has been drafted with all 36 and was delivered to Karin tonight, on time.

BRAVO, everyone. BRAVO.

The principal on the project took notice of our work and my leadership shown on the task and I earned a promotion as a result. Feels awesome.