It’s a new year.
I am trying something a little different this year. Instead of setting goals for myself, I am going to set a few areas of my life (outside of family and work) that I am going to focus on. Family and work will come first, but I need something to do outside of those things.
I honestly don’t remember if I set any goals last year. I never posted about it, so it’s hard to say.
I’ve got a few broad areas that I want to focus on this year. Since I’m not setting many concrete goals, this may blow up in my face later. But it’s something I want to try out.
Fitness
Fitness has been a focus area of mine for the last year or two. I’ve made some great strides in this area, but I want to get even better. I am slowly getting stronger and more fit.
I’ve slowly built up a decent home gym over the last year and half and have been using it almost daily. I want to continue this trend. However, I don’t want to move too far, too fast, because I’m not interested in getting injured. I’ve spent a few years dealing with injuries and pain, and I’m not doing that again.
I haven’t written much about fitness and my progress in the past. Maybe it’s something I can do this year.
Learning
I need to continue learning and growing as a developer. Sometimes I can get stagnant with the learning process.
Some layoffs late last year at my company have made me step back and realize that I need to continue to learn all the time. It’s how I’ll stay relevant where I am now and may help me in the future, if more layoffs come around.
This should be an easy thing to focus on. I just need to be more disciplined about it. I enjoy learning new things in my trade. I also like when I can show new ideas and concepts to other developers on my team.
I would like to continue applying new ideas like SwiftUI and Combine in both my personal apps and hopefully at work.
Reading
Last year I didn’t read as many books as I usually do. I managed to read 34 books, but have a long backlog of books I want to read. And that list is continually growing.
This is one area where I did set a specific reading goal. I want to read 35 books this year. I will be starting my first book of the year later today.
My first book will be Kenobi. It’s a Star Wars novel, and not even canon. Despite it not being canon, I’ve heard so many good things about it, I’m going to give it a shot.
Writing
I want to write more. Specifically, I want to write more to the blog this year. Last year I didn’t write much at all on here. Towards the end of the year, things picked up a bit. But I’m hoping to make this a more consistent thing. I enjoy writing, but I’m not great at it. I’m hoping that the more I write, the better I’ll get.
This is another place where I have a concrete goal. I’d like to write a post here every other week. This is the first of those.
Video Games
I used to play a lot of video games. I enjoyed doing so. In recent years that’s gotten away from me a bit. For me, video games are a great way to escape from the troubles of the day.
I have a Nintendo Switch, Nintendo 3DS and an Xbox Series S.
Recently, I’ve been playing a bit of The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds and Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order.
I’ve missed the entire Xbox One generation, there are a lot of games from that generation that I’m excited to play.
2021 - Let’s Do This!
That’s a lot of things to focus on. I may be spreading myself a bit thin here. Even if I do, I hope that I can at least find some things that I really enjoy.
In the coming weeks, I may go further in depth with each of these areas of focus. At least that’s the plan. We’ll see if I can stick to my “goals” here.
2020 wasn’t the best year. I’m hoping (like so many others) that 2021 is better.