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!