One year ago today I signed the paperwork and handed over the check for my purchase of MacXword, the amazing crossword application that I renovated and released as Black Ink about two months later.

(Semi-interesting trivia: the transaction took place on the premises of the Leopard Tech Talk in Boston (Dedham, actually). Since the seller, Stephan Cleaves, lives up in New Hampshire, we agreed to meet at the event and complete the transaction during the lunch break.)

What a year it’s been! For one thing, it wasn’t but a month or so later that my acquisition frenzy continued with the purchase of MarsEdit from NewsGator. My work on MarsEdit last year culminated in the release of MarsEdit 2.0 in September, which has been praised by users and the media as a major step forward for the application. It even won an Eddy! I couldn’t be happier, and am busily working on further enhancements almost every day.

Thanks in part to my strangely accelerated acquisition schedule, I was asked to speak at the C4 Conference in Chicago, where I discussed many of the lessons I’ve learned in the process. This was a remarkable experience for me because it not only gave me an opportunity to challenge and overcome (or at least deal with!) my fear of public speaking, but it gave me good excuse to think about and rationalize what had actually happened over the course of the preceding several months.

Anyway, it just sort of occurred to me today that this was the one year anniversary of my taking a pretty big leap of faith, and that it was a good day to look back and judge the wisdom of it. In 2007 I went from being a full-time consultant to being a full-time indie software developer. One who does public speaking and sorta, kinda, you know, is respected and stuff.

It took money, time, and a lot of hard work, but it paid off.

It’s nice to look back and realize that many good things in your life only happened because you took a deep breath, evaluated your fears, and decided to jump into the future head first.

I wish a life-changing 2008 to all of you.

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