Three Months In

I can't believe we're three months into 2018 already. Time has passed by very fast.

So, what's happened this year?

  • I'm settling into my new company, and it's nice. There's a number of decisions I may not agree with (at a technical or process level), but everybody is extremely nice, caring, intelligent, and helpful. It is a world away from the environment at my first company. There's flexible hours, catered lunches twice a week, and snacks in the fridge (including healthy fruit and veggies). I'm on the ecosystem team at the moment, and building out tools for other software engineers. It's not the most exciting thing in the world, but I appreciate the importance of having good tools convincing other companies to trust us, and I'll be product owner on at least one of them, so I'll be able to make and control the design decisions as I see fit.

  • My finances has improved. I got a decent-size raise, I think I'll be able to get some amount of bonus at the end of the year, and the company is much more transparent about the number of shares in circulation and where my options will be. My rent and other expenses have also lowered, which should help me save more money. I should be able to save enough money to start investing in three months.

  • I'm settling into a routine. Bike to work every day, work out at the gym afterwards, buy groceries while coming back, make dinner, have some time to code or read, then bedtime. It seems fairly healthy and responsible.

  • I signed up for a fitness app called Sworkit. I thought the exercises were super easy at first. 30 minutes later, not so much. Maybe it will help me look better and feel more confident about my body.

  • I bought a lifetime subscription to Plex, and a 3-year subscription to NordVPN. After I set up automated indexing of movies, I'll be able to build a NAS, sync movies, and watch them on any device I have.

  • My old company is on the verge of collapse. I've been getting drinks (bubble tea) with my old coworkers, and I am so glad I got out when I did. This is close to the third exodus, and every time twice the number of people have left (2, 4, 8). I think this will be the last exodus, though. There's nobody left to leave. Very entertaining to hear, though.

So what hasn't happened this year?

  • I haven't gone on a date yet. I'm a little worried that it isn't going well, but not too concerned at this point. I do need to get out more.

  • I haven't learned how to cook super well. My parents brought a lot of premade food, and it's still in my freezer. :blush:

  • I haven't learned any musical instruments. I've been prioritizing coding and reading more and haven't been able to carve out regular time to develop a habit yet.

  • I don't think publishing with O'Reilly will be a reality this year. I will need to publish more on established mediums, like LinkedIn and Medium, in order to build up enough of a base in order to publish with them.

Everything else on my New Year's Resolutions list isn't up yet, but shouldn't be terribly difficult (read a book every two weeks, read a codebase, etc.). We'll see how the next few months go!