2018 in Review
As 2018 winds down, I figured that now was as good a time as any to reflect on the year that passed. I don't do New Years Resolutions. They don't work. That isn't to say that no one accomplishes anything that they set out to do. But, generally, they fail. For several good reasons. Simplest being that things decided upon a whim once annually are really hard to A) get good at, and B) build up habits around.
I much prefer being proactive during the year. And, I'm totally fine with abandoning something before completing if the reasons are right and it is replaced with something else. And the only way to do that, which I've found reliable is reflection.
Looking back, this was a pretty good year. I would say most of the good came toward the end, aside from keeping up with my Japanese, which flowed throughout the year. Though, I did temporarily halt my French learning.
Work felt "odd" this year. That is the best thing I can say about it. I didn't feel insanely productive. Lots got done. But it feels like I'm in a pattern of having responsibilities lifted off of my plate.
My progress in Japanese this year has been incredible. It caps off year 2 of that project. And month to month progress can sometimes seem tiny. But, comparing it to how I was at the end of 1 year, and it is a pretty clear improvement. The notable difference would be my confidence in reading Manga. The way I learn new vocabulary has also changed substantially and the way I'm cementing what I've learned is changing. I'll save the details for post dedicated to Japanese probably.
I also started a side project for myself which included a serious learning component and got to a stable place with it. This is pretty big. In fact, my music app was probably also done during this year. I'm looking at a screen running the application I wrote right beside me. And it is crazy to me just how much it has become what I thought/hoped it would.
I decided this year to formalize my plan to try and learn something new during the year and I've already started thinking about next year's thing. I'm dabbling with the idea of archery. I would love to practice 弓道 (Kyudo), the Japanese art of archery. But, not surprisingly, it doesn't seem like there is a place for that close to me. But, there are other archery places and it has been a skill I've always been interested in. Getting back into a martial art, especially one with a Japanese aesthetic is also something I'd be interested in. But, I'm still open to other ideas. Usually, I pick up my new thing at the end of the year and build up a habit around it. This years was the smart home app. And it is still far from where I had dreamed it could end up.
Dropping the French learning was a bit of a bummer. But, the reasoning was simple. I didn't have enough of a primer to do the flash cards the way I was doing them, or enough time to make the way that I was doing them work. It was hurting my motivation for Japanese. So, I made the decision, and made up for it by putting extra effort into my Japanese flash card practices. I now speak my answers aloud to both commit myself to an answer and to improve my confidence in actually saying the words and the sentences.
The smart home app gave me some exposure to Docker and RabbitMQ. I won't say I've "learned" them. Docker I've done very little with. I understand what it is a bit better and how it fits into the bigger picture. I've gone a bit deeper with Rabbit. But, ultimately I'm happy to have acquired some new skills. .Net Core I won't call a new skill. Everything I've tried in C# has simply worked. I feel like I really gotten more out of doing this work in VS Code and Kubuntu than I did from "learning" .Net Core.
That is 2018 in terms of marketable skills I guess.
I've taken more of an interest in my health in 2018. I've gotten back to what my health app says is a healthy weight. My heartburn is much more manageable. And I generally feel more in the moment and healthier. I feel like I live a lot more of what I preached in the past. I feel more connected with how I like to perceive myself I guess.
Family-wise. The parents and brothers... relationships all seem to be good. I'm working on improving how I spend my time with my family when I'm with them. This Christmas was one of the best gatherings yet. We didn't get derailed into politics or even any pointless arguments with Louie. We had a "stuff of memories" moment when some of the kids exploded a giant stuffed monkey. And when my parents visited and things started going down the politics route, I did manage to get us back off the topic. I love talking about politics and science and other seemingly mundane stuff with my family. But, with the distance between us I'm trying to spend more personal time. And that is generally working.
With the smaller, more personal family unit. Things are interesting. Along with the uptick in health and energy, I'm finding myself better able to communicate and evaluate how I'm spending time with Cara. I want her to grow up. And I want to enjoy the time I spent with her at each stage. I've always prided myself on not wishing she'd stayed smaller or wouldn't grow out of any given phase, and I want to keep it that way.
I can let a lot of time slip past me doing all sorts of things. I've tried to make sure I find family time. And again, I think it has gone over well. Better than in the year prior. But, I think there is more I can do there.
If I were to think about what I wanted for 2019, there probably won't be any firm goals. Like I said, I don't like resolutions. But, here is what I have:
I'd like to keep doing my Japanese, including Manga. Either via the subscription service, or if I find something else. I don't have many specific targets left. But, maybe as firm as plans will get is this; I'd like to start planning my future trip to Japan. How many days, what time of year, what places and 1 thing planned for each day.
The app was my new project. I'd like to either take it in a new direction or improve upon what is there. Right now the configuration is all hard-coded, there is no password protection and I can't actually load it into Docker yet. Those are all improvement tasks. As for possible things in another direction would be finding something I can use as a "smart button" or custom "smart remotes", or perhaps even just a more ideal device to use for the HTML UI (right now it is laptops and tablets which are $$$). This isn't an exhaustive list. But some possible ways to keep this alive into the new year.
It would be nice to get back into French. If my parents take it up I'm hoping to include them in it for some synergy.
Family wise. I don't think my parents and brothers need much work. We don't see each other crazy often. But, then we didn't when we were closer either. I'd like to just continue to try as I've done this year and improve the quality of time spent with them. Perhaps be more active in creating occasions.
With the family-family. I'd like to continue looking into positive ways of addressing Cara's attitude around electronics, and also our approaches to them. I want to keep her engaged in other aspects of her life. As a software developer though, I also want her to have access to computers, phones and tablets. These types of devices are likely to be a big part of not just her social life, but also her education and future work.
The rest of what I would say here is a little too personal. Even for something that gets on average 2-10 reads only. All of which are likely bots.
In short, in the new year, I'd like to continue to improve myself. In all ways. As a developer. As a father. As a husband, and as a human being in general. I don't want to measure that in shallow goals like "lose 10 pounds" or "run a marathon". I'd rather just make small meaningful and sustainable changes regularly, while I'm living with them. And then, when the end of 2019 comes, like this year... I won't feel a need to make any broad changes that I likely won't be able to stick with.
Anyway, if you're not a bot, and you're reading this, and you made it this far. Whether you agree with my approach or not. Always trying to improve yourself comes with a requirement to accept that anything you accept at the moment may be wrong. So don't read too much into what I say.
Whatever path you may have chosen; All the best to you in the new year.
I much prefer being proactive during the year. And, I'm totally fine with abandoning something before completing if the reasons are right and it is replaced with something else. And the only way to do that, which I've found reliable is reflection.
Looking back, this was a pretty good year. I would say most of the good came toward the end, aside from keeping up with my Japanese, which flowed throughout the year. Though, I did temporarily halt my French learning.
Work felt "odd" this year. That is the best thing I can say about it. I didn't feel insanely productive. Lots got done. But it feels like I'm in a pattern of having responsibilities lifted off of my plate.
My progress in Japanese this year has been incredible. It caps off year 2 of that project. And month to month progress can sometimes seem tiny. But, comparing it to how I was at the end of 1 year, and it is a pretty clear improvement. The notable difference would be my confidence in reading Manga. The way I learn new vocabulary has also changed substantially and the way I'm cementing what I've learned is changing. I'll save the details for post dedicated to Japanese probably.
I also started a side project for myself which included a serious learning component and got to a stable place with it. This is pretty big. In fact, my music app was probably also done during this year. I'm looking at a screen running the application I wrote right beside me. And it is crazy to me just how much it has become what I thought/hoped it would.
I decided this year to formalize my plan to try and learn something new during the year and I've already started thinking about next year's thing. I'm dabbling with the idea of archery. I would love to practice 弓道 (Kyudo), the Japanese art of archery. But, not surprisingly, it doesn't seem like there is a place for that close to me. But, there are other archery places and it has been a skill I've always been interested in. Getting back into a martial art, especially one with a Japanese aesthetic is also something I'd be interested in. But, I'm still open to other ideas. Usually, I pick up my new thing at the end of the year and build up a habit around it. This years was the smart home app. And it is still far from where I had dreamed it could end up.
Dropping the French learning was a bit of a bummer. But, the reasoning was simple. I didn't have enough of a primer to do the flash cards the way I was doing them, or enough time to make the way that I was doing them work. It was hurting my motivation for Japanese. So, I made the decision, and made up for it by putting extra effort into my Japanese flash card practices. I now speak my answers aloud to both commit myself to an answer and to improve my confidence in actually saying the words and the sentences.
The smart home app gave me some exposure to Docker and RabbitMQ. I won't say I've "learned" them. Docker I've done very little with. I understand what it is a bit better and how it fits into the bigger picture. I've gone a bit deeper with Rabbit. But, ultimately I'm happy to have acquired some new skills. .Net Core I won't call a new skill. Everything I've tried in C# has simply worked. I feel like I really gotten more out of doing this work in VS Code and Kubuntu than I did from "learning" .Net Core.
That is 2018 in terms of marketable skills I guess.
I've taken more of an interest in my health in 2018. I've gotten back to what my health app says is a healthy weight. My heartburn is much more manageable. And I generally feel more in the moment and healthier. I feel like I live a lot more of what I preached in the past. I feel more connected with how I like to perceive myself I guess.
Family-wise. The parents and brothers... relationships all seem to be good. I'm working on improving how I spend my time with my family when I'm with them. This Christmas was one of the best gatherings yet. We didn't get derailed into politics or even any pointless arguments with Louie. We had a "stuff of memories" moment when some of the kids exploded a giant stuffed monkey. And when my parents visited and things started going down the politics route, I did manage to get us back off the topic. I love talking about politics and science and other seemingly mundane stuff with my family. But, with the distance between us I'm trying to spend more personal time. And that is generally working.
With the smaller, more personal family unit. Things are interesting. Along with the uptick in health and energy, I'm finding myself better able to communicate and evaluate how I'm spending time with Cara. I want her to grow up. And I want to enjoy the time I spent with her at each stage. I've always prided myself on not wishing she'd stayed smaller or wouldn't grow out of any given phase, and I want to keep it that way.
I can let a lot of time slip past me doing all sorts of things. I've tried to make sure I find family time. And again, I think it has gone over well. Better than in the year prior. But, I think there is more I can do there.
If I were to think about what I wanted for 2019, there probably won't be any firm goals. Like I said, I don't like resolutions. But, here is what I have:
I'd like to keep doing my Japanese, including Manga. Either via the subscription service, or if I find something else. I don't have many specific targets left. But, maybe as firm as plans will get is this; I'd like to start planning my future trip to Japan. How many days, what time of year, what places and 1 thing planned for each day.
The app was my new project. I'd like to either take it in a new direction or improve upon what is there. Right now the configuration is all hard-coded, there is no password protection and I can't actually load it into Docker yet. Those are all improvement tasks. As for possible things in another direction would be finding something I can use as a "smart button" or custom "smart remotes", or perhaps even just a more ideal device to use for the HTML UI (right now it is laptops and tablets which are $$$). This isn't an exhaustive list. But some possible ways to keep this alive into the new year.
It would be nice to get back into French. If my parents take it up I'm hoping to include them in it for some synergy.
Family wise. I don't think my parents and brothers need much work. We don't see each other crazy often. But, then we didn't when we were closer either. I'd like to just continue to try as I've done this year and improve the quality of time spent with them. Perhaps be more active in creating occasions.
With the family-family. I'd like to continue looking into positive ways of addressing Cara's attitude around electronics, and also our approaches to them. I want to keep her engaged in other aspects of her life. As a software developer though, I also want her to have access to computers, phones and tablets. These types of devices are likely to be a big part of not just her social life, but also her education and future work.
The rest of what I would say here is a little too personal. Even for something that gets on average 2-10 reads only. All of which are likely bots.
In short, in the new year, I'd like to continue to improve myself. In all ways. As a developer. As a father. As a husband, and as a human being in general. I don't want to measure that in shallow goals like "lose 10 pounds" or "run a marathon". I'd rather just make small meaningful and sustainable changes regularly, while I'm living with them. And then, when the end of 2019 comes, like this year... I won't feel a need to make any broad changes that I likely won't be able to stick with.
Anyway, if you're not a bot, and you're reading this, and you made it this far. Whether you agree with my approach or not. Always trying to improve yourself comes with a requirement to accept that anything you accept at the moment may be wrong. So don't read too much into what I say.
Whatever path you may have chosen; All the best to you in the new year.
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