So i’ve been doing these kinds of posts for sometime now.
Truth is i’ve been inconsistent with the format. Sometimes these are reflection posts (what happened last year) and other times they are resolutions posts (what i’m looking forward to in the next year). Usually it lands up being an amalgam of both, and I kind of like that personally. So i’m going to stick to keeping it a mishmash of thoughts as i begin the new year.
2018 in review:
- So the brother was married end of 2017 and while things got busy (Indian weddings and all), it was a blast.
- I helped organize Instacart’s annual hackathon for the first time and it was way more fun than i anticipated :).
- I spoke at a conference in Russia. Moscow was one of the most beautiful cities i’ve visited and i was surprised by how friendly the folks were. Easily one of the best trips last year. Definitely going to be visiting them again (don’t let the current political climate fool you, it’s refreshing how much the locals don’t care about that stuff).
- We created our 100th episode on Fragmented (it was in 2018, but i didn’t write one of these posts for that year so i’m allowed to cheat). It remains one of the most fulfilling projects i’ve started in my life. The listeners remain the #1 reason Donn and I continue push episodes every week.
- I watched a tonne of movies in the theaters. Sadly, i didn’t keep a track of them but intend to for 2020 (already counting 5 movies watched this year).
2019 todos:
While i think it’s important to live life as the universe serves it to you, i typically like to have a few goals or things in my bucket list that i like to kick the year off with. These are the ones i’m thinking/starting with for 2019:
Practice Vim for 30 days
I love tinkering with my tools and i genuinely think that responsible “good” programmers spend at least 20-30% of their time tweaking their tooling. I’ve also noticed over the years, that the mentors i look up to, who use vim, friggin fly with it. It’s mesmerizing to simply watch them fiddle with text! Check Gary from DAS.
So this year, i decided i’m going to only use vim, for 30 days straight. I’m not saying i’ll switch to vim 100% yet (thought it’s looking very likely) but i want to genuinely give it a fair shot and see if sticks (this is day 22 of only using vim and this post was written entirely in vim. Look out for a follow up post with my feelings and findings).
Care about your privacy
The Facebook debacle shook me a lot this year. We live in a world where democratic presidential races were influenced by Facebook. Your data is valuable. Yes, you who thinks you have nothing to hide, your data is equally valuable. Wake up already.
I’ve already switched completely to Firefox (follow up post on this as well coming). The biggest change will be my phone. I also use an iPhone now along with the Pixel 2 i use and i’m starting to not like the fact that Google tracks everything I do and doesn’t allow me to use half their services without sharing uncomfortable amounts of my data. This one is going to be hard.
Blogging + screencasting?
I moved this blog to Jekyll (after it became clear that Octopress was probably not going to be actively maintained anymore). My hello 2020 post will bear evidence to how active i’ve been here but i’m going to try and post more here.
The other thing i’m also really curious about doing more is screencasting. I don’t want to limit it to just Andorid, if anything i want to do more non-Androidy stuff like my tips, hacks, productivity scripts etc. Let’s see if i can bring myself to doing more of that.
I remain grateful for my friendships and the new friends i’ve made this year, that have truly made me a better person.
Let’s kick 2019’s butt!