Happy New Year!
The holidays are over and I’m finally getting back in a groove from vacation time. It’s been a few months since I’ve updated or posted anything new on here, and figure its about time to get that rolling again with a small post.
In 2019 I made some small professional and personal goals that I kept mostly to myself. This year I’m planning on renewing these goals and taking them a bit further - hopefully posting them here will keep me on it.
12 Fermentations
Last year I set a goal for 12 fermentations and ended up short (landing on 8 total). This year I’m going to shoot for 12 again. This could be any multi-day fermentation - pretty much anything besides bread.
12 Open Source Contributions
My previous contribution goal was 5 pull requests to repositories I appreciate. This wasn’t terribly difficult, so this year I’m going to bump that to 12.
Read 3 Engineering Books
In 2019 I read 3 engineering books, and in 2020 I plan on continuing that trend. The majority of my reading list is STEM related, but this may also include professional or team development reads.
Read 6 Thoughtful Books
Last year my overall reading goal was 24 books. This worked out fine, but by the end of the list I noticed just how many of these were not that memorable. I still plan on reading for fun, but would like to make sure I’m also intentionally picking up more works to challenge myself or my views.
In 2019 I did pick up a handful of books that I’d say fall into this category:
- Black Leopard, Red Wolf - fascinating, dense story telling with lore based on African history and mythology. The world, characters, and voice are wonderfully different from the tropes of the fantasy genre, and it was awesome being exposed to literature like this.
- Give People Money - a one sided take on Universal Basic Income that touts many of its hypothetical, and ocassionally known, benefits.
- How To Be An Antiracist - delves into what it means to be an antiracist and how that differs significantly from being apathetic and simply not racist.
- Wordslut - a recent examination of language from a feminist angle. Extremely accessible while still treading unfamiliar ground.
In 2020 I plan to specifically seek out more works like these alongside whatever technical and fun reading I end up doing.
2020, Let’s Go
There it is, an actionable list to hold myself accountable for this year. Looks like I have a decent chunk of work to get started on, but it should be a fun trek. In the spirit of accountability I’ll even keep track of these goals here.
| Fermentations | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Open Source Pull Requests | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Engineering Reading List | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | |||||||||
| Thoughtful Reading List | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ &* ✓ | ✓ | + |
* Counting these as one book since they are like two long booklets. Surely two long booklets is the same as a small book?