New Year Same Old Problems

It’s a new year once again! So many years have passed since I entered the workforce as a degree welding adult. With every passing year I find myself continually displeased at my own personal development given the time that has passed.

It’s rare that I make significant progress on personal projects, and if I do make progress on something it’s often proprietary. As a career contractor, I constantly lose access to code of which I have been a significant contributor. When I lose access to a codebase, I essentially lose documentation of my own personal development. Both issues result in the same feeling every January: Did I accomplish anything last year?

I’m here in attempt to put a stop to this unyielding cycle. I want to motivate myself to pursue my personal projects and at the same time share knowledge I’ve gained as a professional. It’s time to try something different.

I need an outlet to express my creativity and I believe a blog will do nicely. I don’t expect anyone to care: this is for me! I will not be limiting my posts here to satiate another audience. I will write about anything that interests me. If you happen to find something useful here — great!

May we both have substantive 2024!

My 2024 Goals

I’ve prepared a set of high-level goals for this year. I won’t be detailing these yet as I don’t want to box myself in too tightly. As I stated above, this blog is for me! I’ll be keeping myself accountable with this initial post.

In 2024, I’d like to accomplish the following list of goals:

  • Contribute to or create at least one open source software project
  • Design and manufacture at least two printed circuit boards
  • Become proficient at Verilog and FPGAs.
  • Become moderately proficient in the design of compliant mechanisms

I’ll check back in next year. Hopefully I will have completed everything!