I can’t think of a better way to start acting on one of my goals, hint: blogging, then to kick off 2019 with a goals list.

Travel

I haven’t done much travel and I’m looking to change that in 2019. I’ll be heading to New Orleans for a few days in April which is a good start. I’d like to plan two additional trips. One being a weekend gateway and another being for a longer vacation.

Self-care

A few goals concerning self-care

Exercise

While I don’t plan to purchase a gym membership there are plenty of things I can do at home. Once the weather turns my goal is to run at twice a week. Plus a colleague of mine does yoga so maybe I’ll attend a few of those.

Better Eats

This really just comes down to a few items

  • More fruits and vegtables
  • Drink more water, tea, macha
  • Drink less sugary drinks primarily decrease the amount of Coke and Mountian Dew
  • Eat less sweets and candy

More Sleep

I do a horrible job at getting a consistent amount of sleep. Technically, I’ve already started the year out poorly as I was sleepy by 9PM but by the time I was finished prepping for bed I was no longer in the mood and ended up staying up until midnight and woke up at 6AM. Goal is to try and get closer to 8 hours a night of shut eye.

Read

Over the last few years I’ve started to read more which is partially driven by my girlfriend as we’ll read the same book at the same time flipping between us on who chooses the book. Even with that, I still only get through a few books a year.

I probably won’t get through all of these but books on my 2019 reading list in alphabetial order

While I might not get to all of these I’m aiming for the very least 1 book a month.

Open Source

In 2018 I started actively working on a few personal side projects which includes

I also made my first contribution to an open source project that wasn’t one of mine.

For 2019 I want to finish the projects listed above as well as start a few more. I also want to contribute more to other projects that I don’t own.

Start a Business

This is nothing more than a strech goal and not realistic but I’m including it nonetheless. Throughout 2018 I spent time trying to think of ideas for side projects that could potentially turn into a business. I think I have one that I plan to try and work towards. My goal for 2019 is simply to spent time on building out the software for the potential business and see what comes from it.

Community Participation

I’ve been actively attending Meetups in 2018 but have haven’t used it as an opportunity to network. For 2019, my goal is to continue going to at least one Meetup a month but to actively meet people and network. The Chicago Java User Group occassionally does lightning talks so I might attempt to put togther a lightning talk. Last but not least is to stop lurking on ddd-cqrs-es and Chicago Tech slack channels and participate more in the conversations.

Blogging

I’ve included this as a goal since 2016 when I set up this blog on GitHub pages but I’ve never made much progress. At the time of writing this I have 11 unfinished or barely started blogs posts in my _drafts folder. My 2019 goal would be to write one post a month but I’d just to happy to finish a few of my drafts.

Streaming

Try my hand at streaming on twitch. I bought some equipment last year and attempted to stream however I ran into a slight issue. I currently get my internet from my apartment complex and discovered that they are blocking twitch. More specifically, it looks like they could be blocking RTMP. To verify I tried a few remote locations and I didn’t have any issues. This might also be the reason why HQ video doesn’t work while I’m on my WiFi. This leaves a few potential options

  1. drop the internet provided by my building and start paying for it myself.
  2. Stream from work on my off hours.
  3. Stream over a VPN