Goals & Plans for 2024

So I've already written a post that will post on the 7th of January about a specific new years resolution (dealing with blogging), but I've been working a lot on all my goals and plans going into the next year, so I wanted to highlight them here.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, btw:)

I have a basic bread and butter work-out goal of simply doing a few minutes of push-ups/sit-ups before showering every day. Not meant to be too crazy or hard, but to keep me healthy and in the habit of doing some amount of exercise. Got the idea of doing just a few minutes of both from this post by Mark Rober.

I have a goal that involves reaching out to various people I haven't seen or contacted in a long time. I did this at the beginning of this year and found it valuable to let people know I was thinking of them/catch up with people a little. Want to start it up again this year and be more consistent with it. Shooting a text or phone call once a week is my current gameplan.

I have a reevaluation goal. In order to continue to help me progress and do/accomplish things I want to do/accomplish, I'm going to have a regular check-in every two weeks. See what progress I made, reset expectations etc. This is lowkey the most important of my goals. It will help me consistently improve myself a lot, I think.

2024 Campaign related goals. As of right this moment, I don't have much flushed out in terms of pacing for what I need to do, but I know I'll need to work on this consistently throughout the next 6 months.

I have other smaller projects I want to work on, and I'll plan those during my two-week evaluations.

One thing I'm really excited about this upcoming year is reading. I have a lot of books that I'm excited to read, so I've planned out a pretty extensive reading chopping block out for myself.

Throughout the year I'm going to relistening to books 2-4 of the Stormlight Archive to prepare for Wind and Truth (the 5th and final book of this era), which is coming out next December. This is quite the endeavor. They are long books, haha. If I spent 30 minutes listening to Words of Radiance each day, it would take me 3 months to finish. And the books only get longer from there. I'll be spending a lot of time walking to and from classes, so I definitely plan on utilizing that time for this purpose.

I'm currently reading the novellas in the Cytoverse so I can read Defiant which I got for Christmas (thanks parents!). My family will be doing a book club over the year, 6 books for the year, which I'm excited for. I got several self-help books for Christmas that I want to read. Also want to read/reread some other things including Warbreaker, The Emperor's Soul, Long Chills & Case Dough, Senet magazine (thanks Andrew!), so I have a lot I want to consume. I'm excited. Obviously my progress in this department can be seen on my list on the far left.

It's going to be a great year:)

Struggles (on how to spend time) and my Motivations (to write blog posts)

So sometimes I struggle to know what to do. Or, I guess, what I want to do. I have free time right now, and I have tons of things that I theoretically want to do, but I just don't want to right now, I guess? I feel like I have some sort of mental block where because I put them on a to-do list, they suddenly become burdens even though they are genuinely things that I want to do. It's weird. So I'm here writing things instead. Hopefully this will give me a motivation-start and I'll have more energy/desire to do various other things.

I have a lot of thoughts, and I enjoy sharing them. It makes me want to write blog posts. This reminds me of a blog post that I started writing but didn't finish due to lack of time in the moment, so I'll just copy paste it here:

It's done! Finally finished with this semester. Spent a good chunk of Monday working on Finals due that night and Tuesday doing the same. Spent legit a majority of Monday packing and cleaning. And today we are driving home:) According to Google Maps that I pulled out two seconds ago, we're only 12 minutes away from Fallon.

So I had this thought the other day (with this post and last post being evidence: It appears I've been having a lot of thoughts recently) about why I write blog posts. Why I do it, why I enjoy it etc. I've definitely talked about this subject over the course of many years here on this blog, and if I remember correctly my response involved around things such as: Enjoying condensing and constructing my thoughts in a written format, having it as a creative outlet, using it as a method of journaling, and probably some other reasons I'm missing. 

I think all of those definitely still stand, but I had an additional one that I wanted to add (I also just thought of another one which I now will also write about).

Another reason I like writing on my blog because it makes me feel connected with my family. Specifically my brothers Andrew and Eric.

I love how we all have blogs, and in the past I believe I've referenced how I really enjoy it when our blog posts respond to each other in a way. 

[End of writings, now I'm adding onto it]

I just enjoy that even though I don't call them the most (something I wish and plan to remedy during this new year) we can still be connected through these posts. Obviously posts differ largely in a lot of different ways, but every time a small part of it is like a little email to my brothers and others. And it's great. 

It's just another wonderful thing that comes out of this wonderful little blog of mine which I've become quite fond of over the years.

I'm having other thoughts I want to write, but they would be best written in a separate post that I'm currently planning on posting on January 1st (edit: ¿Maybe January 7th?). Unsure if I'll post another post before then, so I guess: See you next year! Merry Christmas:) I love you all.

I Wanted to Post Today and a Thought about Filler Episodes

Today's important to me, so I wanted to post something. 

I suppose many days are important to me and I don't post on those, but I want to post today, so I am.

This is completely unrelated to why this day is important to me, but:

I had this thought the other day. It's spawned off a YouTube video I didn't actually watch. But the videos title, if I remember correctly, was "If Our Life had Filler Episodes".

This is, of course, in reference to filler episodes in anime. Filler episodes are episodes that just exist. They don't progress any plot lines. They don't really do much of anything. The characters do something random that doesn't matter in terms of the anime overall. You can easily watch the show without watching the filler episodes and be 100% okay.

And it just made me think: 

I don't want any filler episodes in my life. 

I want to do things every day that progress me or progress a storyline or progress whatever thing you want to connect from this analogy. I don't want there to be any days in my life where I could have just skipped over them and nothing would have changed.

And I thought it was a cool thought, so I thought I'd share.

Hope you enjoyed said thought.

3 Personal Projects I'm Working On

I have a few big things I'm working on right now that I'm excited about (although they inflict varying degrees of stress as well).

2024 Campaign

The day was June 14, 2019. Joseph, me, and ¿other people? are talking about the Mistborn Adventure Game and how we should totally do a campaign sometime. We recognized that then wasn't the best time as Thomas and I were both about to leave on our missions. So Joseph decreed that 5 years from that day, we would do campaign. A Friday. I remarked, it may be easier to start one day later, but nay! 5 years from that day, we were to do it!

This became an ongoing joke for the years following until actually doing it became more and more solidified. So many more details I could write, and perhaps I will in a separate blog post.

I wish we could get our whole family in on it since many of us love and adore Mistborn, but it's just not possible. Too many conflicting schedules irl, too many characters in-game etc.

I'm running the campaign, so I've been doing a lot of world building, plotting etc. It's been super fun, but definitely stressful at times, since I actually want it to turn out well. Especially because I have no prior DMing experience, I'm nervous -- I'm hoping to do at least one one-shot to get the hang of things before the actual campaign begins.

I reference world-building, and this is because the campaign takes place on an alternate timeline. This timeline is if MAJOR MISTBORN ERA 1 SPOILERS PLEASE DO NOT SPOIL YOURSELF I WILL CRY [black out is not working properly. Removed spoilers. I hope I didn't spoil anyone] Obviously the implications of this are massive, and so there's huge differences. I'm trying to create a world that is realistic to what might actually take place if that took place.

Applying for Internships

This is less of a personal project and more of an important thing that I really need to continually be doing and it's definitely stressful because if I don't get an internship soon, my graduation is just going to be pushed back longer and longer.

I've applied for a good handful so far (10, I think), but I definitely need to just keep grinding away. How time sensitive it is stresses me out. Applying for internships this upcoming summer was best done a month or two ago. Regardless, we press forward. I should honestly set time aside for this every day.

Personal Coding Project -- Ultimate Game Winner

I made this neat thing back during my 2nd semester during one of the first programming classes you take. I think it's neat. The base idea is solving the problem my family runs into where we're like, "But who's the Ultimate Game Winner??"

Over breaks when my family gets together and plays tons of games, sometimes we keep track of who's won each game and such. And at the end, we want to know who's done the best. Couple problems arise, however, when coming up with a way to score. If we just go based off the number of times people have won, there are two major problems: 1. Andrew and I typically play the most games, so we are strongly advantaged. 2. This greatly rewards playing as many quick games as possible.

The purpose of my program is to give you points based on how long the game is, how complex it is, while not rewarding (too heavily) just playing lots and lots of games. There's various math shenanigans going on in the background, but you just input what game was played and who played. It gives points and displays an updated leader board accordingly. If it doesn't recognize the game, you input the length and weight of the game into the system. It remembers the game from now on.

Anyway, point being: I want to make that program but better. I want to because 1. I think it's cool and I want to. 2. It'll help me become a better programmer and 3. Good personal projects look great on a resume.

I have a lot of ideas on how to make it better, but the main two are: 1. Having a GUI (an interface with buttons etc. instead of it being an terminal-based application and 2. Having it automatically scrape data off of boardgamegeek, so you don't have to manually look up and input the data.

I've done a little work with GUI's in the past, but I have a lot to relearn and learn there. Same with scraping data off the internet; I've done a little, but I have a lot to learn. Both seem like very useful things to learn about, though, and I'm excited to do so.

Ooo, the Advent of Code 2023 is coming up as well, so that'll be another thing I'm doing. 25-day coding challenge that takes place leading up to Christmas.

I Text Quite Unlike Anyone Else I Know

I know part of this blog definitely serves as a journal of some form, but I've already written a lot about everything going on in my life in personal documents, so I'm choosing not to write about them here. If you'd like to inquire further, feel free to reach out to me.

I text quite unlike anyone else I know. And I quite like how I text.

I'm sure many of my text mannerisms also come out in my blog posts. Prime example is, of course, my parenthesis within parenthesis. Now-a-days I rarely go over 3 within each other, with 3 being pretty rare itself. I feel like I still do 2 parenthesis within each other fairly often, though. Back in the day, I would use absurd amounts of parenthesis within parenthesis and it was fantastic.

Another common thing I've found myself doing in texts is using the words 'like' and 'uh' (and 'um', but the other two more frequently) in ways as if I'm talking. If I need a pause but also need to describe what something is like, I'll chuck in a ', like,' in my text. I suppose the commas are unnecessary, but they add in a pause that I like. I feel like using like in this manner is not uncommon.

I chunk in an 'uh' when I'm unsure about something and a nice little pause would be good.

Describing the specific circumstances on when I do certain things is harder than expected.

I also feel like I commonly write books for texts. Writing in-depth texts describing whatever I'm describing is pretty common for me. Especially in regards to my feelings, I write quite a bit.

I feel like I'm missing some things, but that's all that's coming to mind right this second, so I'm just going to call this post here.