Twenty-Eight
October 13th, 2021Introduction
The last year will prove, I believe, to be one of the most consequential of my life. That may sound negative, but it's a positive! When I compare last year's goals to previous years, they aren't as exciting or flashy. Yet, this was a big year in which a lot of special events took place.
This article will look at the goals I wanted to achieve in my twenty-eighth year of life. Then, I'll reflect on the last year with some activities, feelings, and thoughts.
Also, this year I made a slight distinction between primary and secondary goals. The idea is that some goals are more critical than others or carry more weight, so when I'm building my goals, I visually—and structurally—make this distinction.
Primary Goals
Double Business Revenue
Building on a similar goal from last year (regarding an increase in freelance revenue), I put the mark this year at double the plan from last year. A two-fold increase may sound like a substantial increase—however, the bar I set last year was low, in my opinion. Therefore, the doubling of the goal, given a year of work, was not unreachable.
Still, I was concerned about reaching it, but I wasn't in desperation at the onset of the year.
I reached my revenue mark in mid-July, thus achieving this goal in just over nine months.
Furthermore, by the year-end (for my goal schedule), I had beaten it by ~25%. Next year, I hope to double the revenue mark from this year again.
Do Something for Meagan Every Week & Write It Down
As in previous years, I wanted to have a goal that put focus on my interpersonal relationships. This goal was to do something nice for my fiancé intentionally and then write it down.
You may be thinking, "Wow, only ONE thing a WEEK? That's nothing". And you would be correct.
However, in the context of the goal, it meant something out of the normal flow of our responsibilities around the house or to each other. I typically knew it was a successful act because it made her extremely happy, or she made a point of saying thank you at a later time.
I completed the goal—giving myself a pass on each activity for all 52 weeks.
Despite my efforts, it's still evident, at least to me, that she does more for me week-to-week, but this is progress!
Blue Belt or Bust
This goal was interrupted last year by COVID-19. However, given the position I was in entering 2020-2021, I had little doubt that I would get my blue belt this year.
Again, the coronavirus tried to hinder my progress. Cases increased drastically in the fall and winter, prompting more restrictions and lockdowns. I began practicing in earnest when my coach started talking about a possible test or promotion. I even purchased a Brazillian Jiu-Jitsu practice dummy to review positions more frequently.
In March 2021, I felt pretty good about my game. Of course, I'm never that confident in myself, but I had put in more work and felt pretty prepared.
Usually, I attend the early morning classes and sometimes make it to a midday class. But, I got a tip that I should attend a 10 a.m. class sometime, which James teaches (he is the gym's founder, a second-degree blackbelt, and head instructor).
The state had recently lifted COVID restrictions, so classes were open to more than eight people. For that reason, the 10 a.m. class on Monday, March 22, was one of the highest energy classes I have ever attended. During the sparring session toward the end of class, I was surprised that James came over and rolled (sparred) with me. That never happens, so I had a suspicion that something was up.
Finally, at the end of class, he gave a speech on how good it felt to be back in the gym with so many students, and he began awarding stripes and a few belt promotions. Sure enough, I was one of the white belts that got my blue belt that day.
Although I was anticipating it, I felt terrific. And when I got home, I surprised Meagan with the news. It felt good after two years of uncertainty to cross this goal off the list.
One Blog Post a Week
Despite having a blog that's a few years old, I still didn't have many blog posts. So to remedy the lack of posts, I made a goal to write one post a week this year.
I wasn't specific on the post type, but I wanted to focus on writing more programming/tech articles. In addition, part of my business revenue comes from writing articles for blogs, so I wanted to add more value to my blog by producing content.
I started out writing a lot of posts about Python (the programming language). I produced other articles about hiking, ReactJS, and other programming topics.
For most of the year, I was able to find a nice chunk of time to bang out a quick article. Unfortunately, I slowed at the end of the year as my free time became scarce.
I achieved this goal between October 8, 2020, and October 8, 2021, by writing 54 posts!
Surprisingly, that was two more than I had set out to write. As a final note on this goal, I separated my programming/tech blog from my personal blog. Therefore, the traffic would, hopefully, not be split between the two.
One 60-min Meditation Session a Week
I included a meditation goal this year, and keeping with the tradition of previous years, I failed to reach it!
I wanted to see how long sessions once a week would change my mediation practice and experience. Unsurprisingly, it's challenging to carve out an hour once a week for meditation. I was steady for the first couple of weeks, but the sessions became unpleasant.
First of all, I often would start to fall asleep as I was sitting up. Second, my body would get hot; I would sweat and feel like my breath would get short after sitting in meditation longer than forty minutes.
I'm not sure what was happening, but it felt like I was activating some stress response by the way that I meditated. As previously mentioned, it wasn't pleasant. So I switched to trying to do one hour of mediation in a day, once a week. So, effectively, trying to hit fifty-two days with one hour of meditation.
In September, I realized I wasn't going to reach this goal. However, I completed 41 out of the 52 sessions/days by the end of the year.
Secondary Goals
I write some goals at the top of my goals page that span the entire width. Also, I write them in a larger font. Next, indented and using smaller writing, I include secondary goals that are often smaller in scope and importance.
In the next section of this article, I'll discuss the secondary goals for this past year.
Track Car Speeds with Open CV
I had a vision of creating a computer program using Open CV (computer vision) to track the speeds of cars as they raced past my house.
It would have involved recording each car and writing a program that could analyze the video to judge speed.
I found similar programs or read about programs that people had created doing the same thing.
Unfortunately, it's hard to prioritize a time-consuming project like this one with all the other, much more essential things in my life. It would have been cool to build the program, but halfway through the year, it was apparent that this would never reach the top of my to-do list.
I didn't create this program, but I wish I would have because now there is someone in the neighborhood making noise about the car speeds, and I could have provided them with evidence!
No Alcohol in February
Not consuming alcohol in February is now a yearly goal. And, it was another successful year! Also, I discovered a secret weapon, Heineken non-alcoholic beer!
Learn How To Pour Concrete
This goal was inspired by my desire to get a shed. I thought I would need to pour a platform and wanted to make a plan to learn how to work with concrete.
However, getting a shed wasn't in the cards this year, and I allowed myself to take a fail on this goal because of its lack of relevance.
Contribute to Open Source
Last year, I had a goal to volunteer my developer skills or contribute to open-source software. I didn't contribute to open-source last year (although I did volunteer some of my time), so I wanted to hit the second part of that thought this year.
First, I looked for a Python program that pulled data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis's API (BEA). Next, I found what seemed to be an excellent library that did what I wanted.
I was a little chagrined to find it because I thought that maybe I could contribute to open source by building a library to do call the BEA API.
Regardless, I tried using it but kept getting an error. I went on the Github repository. Someone had filed an issue with the library for the same error message that I was getting.
Perfect, I thought. I'll be able to fix this and achieve my goal! After pulling down the repository, I looked up how to work with a downloaded library in a Python project to test changes made to the source code.
The error was relatively small. I fixed it and created my first PR, submitting the change with the issue attached to the repository. After what seemed like a long time, maybe a week, the owner merged the pull request, and I had contributed to an open-source project!
It was a nice feeling, and I really should do it more. I have a project or two that I might open source if I put a little more work into them.
Understand Financial Part of Business Plan
I took TWO online classes on building a business plan via Udemy to try and remember many of the things I learned in high school and college.
It was an excellent refresher and helped clear my mind on planning and forecasting my business revenue moving forward. As I set more ambitious goals, I want the ability to predict and measure performance better.
Part of that process is understanding the different parts of a business plan and what is essential to my freelancing business.
After completing the course, I considered this goal complete. Then, I went looking for software to help me build out my forecasts. It took a lot of searching, but I found the company LivePlan. It was almost exactly what I was hoping to find.
I built a few different scenarios in the following year (2021-2022), trying to understand how to double my revenue mark from the previous year.
Unfortunately, it doesn't integrate with Quickbooks Self-Employed, so I'm looking to get set up on Quickbooks Online to track progress in real-time.
Reread Tribe
At the end of last year, I read All Quiet On The Western Front. A renowned anti-war book, finishing the book made me think about the book Tribe by Sebastian Junger. So then, I added "reread Tribe" to my goals list in a slightly impulsive move.
Nonetheless, I reread the book quickly and was able to cross it off my goals list quickly!
Complete Class on Typescript
I think that I'll be able to make myself more valuable as a freelancer if I learn Typescript.
Typescript is a statically typed superset for Javascript. In other words, it's like Javascript put on some big boy pants.
I found a course on Udemy, and after getting through it, I wrote a program in Typescript that I use for this blog. More specifically, the interactive map feature used in hiking posts and deployed as a subdomain at https://maps.retz.blog/[map ID] is a Typescript project.
It's not everything I want it to be, and I have a lot more to learn about Typescript, but it's a start!
Reflections and Updates on Previous Goals
Back in My 24th Year, I had a few goals that are still impacting my life in important ways. The first was the goal to go on a backpacking trip. This year I was fortunate enough to go on three backpacking trips!
Second, in that same year, was the first time I went to a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu gym. And, you already got an update on that from a goal in this past year.
Third, I wanted to get involved with a girl or have a relationship that year. Well, this year I got married to that girl!
In Year 26, I made a goal to start my new career. I was an assistant goal professional that wanted to be a software developer. It's been difficult, at times, over the last two years. And I've been fortunate to have the love and support of my wife. Without her, I'm not sure what I'd be doing. I'm still a long way from where I want to be with my freelance business and my new career choice, but the last year has been a blessing.
It wasn't until the last month or so that I've been trying to make a point of being appreciative of all the work that I get: even if it makes me busy. Because I know the stress of watching the work go away and wondering where the next client is going to come from.
Conclusion
I've stopped to reflect on the places I've gone, and things I've done this year multiple times. The year has been humbling, exhausting, and wonderful. I hope next year I can have just as much, if not more success, with my goals. And that I'm able to experience more of the amazing moments that I had this year.
Thanks for reading!