During the month of January, I will be posting (tentatively) one post every day as part of the #bloganuary challenge
Today’s Prompt:
What’s a road trip you would love to take?

2022 is here, and while reading Sara Rosso’s post on reflections about last year’s and planning for this year, I decided to give it a try as well. This was my first time doing this but I really liked the idea and will try to do it every year.

The proposal is to look back, analyze what you’ve done, and then look forward to the brand new year ahead of you and plan a bit about goals, focus, etc.

Sara has a link to a Google doc and a PDF file in her post where you can find the guide/questions for the exercise and I encourage you to take a look and if you feel like it, do the same.

I really enjoyed doing this. Looking back to what is now behind, especially to a year like 2021, filled with challenges worldwide, so much bad news, so much sadness, it was a good exercise to look back and explore everything that happened in my personal and professional life. Acknowledge all the privileges I have (not that I didn’t know that before, but it’s always good to revisit it), all the good things, regardless of how big or how small. All the mistakes and lessons learnt from them, all opportunities, all the people who crossed your path and made a difference. All the things you’ve been through that helped you know yourself a little bit better. All the accomplishments, no matter how small they were.

It was also very exciting to plan for the new year. It’s gonna be quite the year. Filled with new (and scary) challenges and I had a lot of fun thinking about it and decided to add the planning below so I can come back next year and see what I was able to accomplish.

The Year Ahead:

Focus Word

What’s one word to describe your focus for the upcoming year? 

Learning

Focus Goals & Intentions

Health

•  Exercise at least 2x/ Week every week
•  Keep the focus on my Keto habits like I did in 2021
• Bike at least 2x/ week during the summer (that’s just for fun and can be on top of the first goal)

Finances

One thing I want to try is not directly related to finances, but to create a more minimalist habit, so I want to commit every other month to avoid buying anything that is not strictly necessary. So no Amazon (and similar stores) purchases for the whole month every other month. First, to avoid piling up a bunch of things I’m gonna use once and never again and also to avoid spending money on unnecessary things (and this can be the financial aspect of this goal). So, basically, I can get food, medication, etc and replace a broken thing if it’s extremely necessary during the non-purchase-allowed months.

Relationships

I am usually very present in the life of my family and friends but I have noticed a while ago that I am very reactive in this matter and very little proactive. Meaning, I always say yes to invitations and gladly make an effort to see my friends and family but I rarely, and I mean RARELY, invite someone to do something. I’m used to doing things by myself, I feel I might be getting in the way of people’s plans, so I almost never invite people to do the things I am doing. So, for this year I am committing to invite people to do the things I like doing, be it a trip, hiking, game night, eating out, etc.

Career

Oh, I feel this is will be the thing I’m gonna focus on the most this year. It’s gonna be big and challenging, and it’s gonna take a lot of energy and dedication and brainpower (brainpower I sometimes think I don’t have LOL), but it’s gonna be fun, and filled with learning opportunities (which to me also means fun. Yeah, I’m a geek), and hopefully, by the end of the year, after trying my very best, complete successfully the dev rotation. So, with that, I will add some goals here that will help me with my learning path.

• Keep my other blog (Rosie Codes) updated during my Mobile Developer Apprentice Rotation. This is a private blog for now. I’m still deciding if I should make it public or leave it private and repost only the posts I want to make public here in this blog.
• Participate and actually finish the #100daysofcode challenge
• Participate and finish the Advent of Code in December
• Finish the Kotlin Basics course
• Start the Kotlin Developer one
• Finish the Android Kotlin Developer (Udacity)

Other

• Write at least 2 posts every month on this blog (starting from February, since I’m doing the Bloganuary this month and will (tentatively) post everyday in January.
• Read at least 12 books (one every month, but this can include technical books)
• Find the time to start playing WOW regularly again

The Upcoming Year

What do you want the overarching theme for the upcoming year to be?

Be a sponge. Study, focus on learning everything my brain allows me to.

What do you want to see, discover, explore?

I would love to, Covid permitting, add a few new countries to my “Countries I have visited” list. If that’s not possible/safe, I would love to be able to do what I planned to do in 2021 and had to cancel due to change in the covid restrictions, which was a road trip to the East Coast of Canada. I had the whole thing planned, airBnBs booked, things I wanted to see in NB, PE, NS and NF and it didn’t happen, so I really hope it happens this year.

Who do you want to spend more time with in the upcoming year?

All the people I was not able to see in the past 2 years.

What skills do you want to learn, improve or master?

Although mastering is not on the table, because I simply don’t think it’s possible, I would like to improve my mobile development skills, of which I have only started to scratch the surface.

What do you want your everyday life to be like?

Fun and challenging (in a good way)

Which habits do you want to change, cultivate or get rid of?

I want to watch less TV and read more. 2021 was a complete failure in terms of reading. I really want to change that and go back to my avid-reader habit.

And that would be it for today. Hopefully, I will remember to come back to this post next year XD

Thank you Sara, for sharing this exercise! I had a lot of fun.