I've been a freelancer now for two years and things have been going pretty well. The start of a decade seems like a significant time and a good time to think about what I'd like to do in the next ten years.

Collaborate more on projects with interesting people

There's a perfect size job for a single freelancer, but I'd also like to work on more varied and larger projects. Collaborating with other skilled freelancers is a great way to do this. Plus, you get someone to bounce ideas off and you get to learn from the experience of someone else. I've done a few collaborative projects so far and I'd like to bring this to more of my work.

Work with clients more at the ideas stage

As a new freelancer I've found most of my projects have landed on my door at the build stage. Everything has been decided and they just need someone to build it. This has been a great way to start off my freelance career and develop my skills. As I become more experienced I'd like to contribute more to the specification and the design. I'd like to be known for my creative problem solving skills and sought out by clients who want help to improve their business.

Be more proactive about finding new clients and meeting interesting people

I've been very lucky so far and had plenty of clients. A lot of this came from the networking I did when I first set up shop. I met many interesting people, but I've been so busy lately that I've let this slip. I need to do more networking, but I also need to look outside of the web design community if I want more varied clients.

Bring more ideas to life – 50% of income to come from my own projects by 2019

I'm very proud of my ideas book: A little sketchpad I keep with me and jot down my ideas (even the daft ones) as they come to me. Somewhere in that book is a piece of gold just waiting to be discovered.

Remember to have fun

At times working for yourself can be a little bit stressful and feel very serious. It's easy to get bogged down in that and forget how lucky I am to be doing something I really enjoy.

Make time for friends and family

I can be a bit of a workaholic at times and I get so preoccupied with what I'm doing that I forget the most important things. My friends are busy people too, and I've found that I actually need to plan to see them rather than just bumping into them a lot. I will get better at this.

Be more like Pete

Pete was one of my closest and best friends. He also went freelance at about the same time I did. He died just over a year ago and I miss him more than I can say. Pete overflowed with enthusiasm and you couldn't help but be dragged along and be inspired by it. He was also incredibly friendly and genuinely interested in everyone around him. I always felt better about myself after a chat with him. If I can be half the person he was, then I'll do fine in this coming decade.

You?

If you've got any new decade's resolutions or thoughts about mine then please let me know in the comments.

This was just a little Sunday project inspired by the number of strikes we’ve been having and the isitchristmas.com website. Isthereastrike.co.uk lists organisations that have been experiences strikes and then has a simple yes/no page for each one.

As the site is very simple it was also a nice test bed for a few things I’ve been learning about lately. It runs on ASP.NET MVC (it may be the simplest MVC site ever), has an Entity Framework data model keeping track of the strikes and has a Dynamic Data admin section.

There is a small unit test for the project using xUnit and I’m going to try using an IOC container to allow me to test the data filtering. It’s overkill, but a good way to learn.

Perhaps people will even find it useful, but I’m really hoping that all the strikes (particularly Leeds Bin Strike) will be sorted out soon.

When I started blogging I wrote my own blogging engine as a way to improve my ASP.NET skills. It was a nice project, but as other blogging engines became more advanced I didn't have time to keep up. So I've wanted to move my blog to another engine for a while. There really is no point in reinventing the wheel and I have more exciting projects now.

I heard about Oxite while I was looking into ASP.NET MVC. MVC is way of structuring applications and has been around for ages, but ASP.NET MVC is a new thing and a thing that I'm quite excited about. Oxite started life as an MVC example and isn't a polished product yet. However, I thought it would be an excellent way to become more familiar with .NET MVC.

It didn't quite meet my needs out of the box. In particular I didn't want my old URLs to break. So I've hacked it about a bit and in the process learnt a lot about MVC. I'm slightly dreading the planned update to Oxite though as the modifications I've made will probably get in the way, but I'm sure the updates will be worth it. I was surprised and pleased when one of the Oxite developers got in touch via twitter to check if I liked Oxite and to offer any help if I needed it. I did end up needing it and he was very helpful, so big thanks go to Erik Porter.

I'm due to start my first .NET MVC project in two weeks and playing about with Oxite has been a big help.