Every Dev's Doing It!

Blogging about their goals for 2019, of course!

I find that making goals works best for me, as they are more concrete than resolutions, which our friends at google claim, 'is "a firm decision to do or not to do something"'.

Seems to me then, that new year's 'resolutions' are something that can quickly be 'broken', and that's at the moment you go against your original 'decision'.

Goals are typically bigger in scope, and they are something to actively work towards, you can't really 'break' your goal. I suppose you can just make no effort to work towards them, but then they'll make you feel very guilty as they stare at you from their list 😊.

So make goals for 2019! 😉

:rolling_eyes: Okay, enough with the New Year's philosophy already... :rolling_eyes:

Anyway, this year should be exciting in terms of goals, since I'm not bound to a fixed location of work for 42.5 hours a week. With that said, I'm still keen to be using the traditional 40 hours a week leftover outside of my parttime contract to develop my skills and continue building projects.

Goals for 2019

I've divided my goals into two halves: directly career-oriented goals and miscellaneous (mostly hobbies and fun stuff)

Software Engineering and Career Goals

• Learn Typescript and incorporate it into my personal stack of choice (As a first challenge, I'm going to convert this very blog to typescript... still keeping GatsbyJS... I predict explosions and failure in my future... :sob:)
• Find a paying freelance employer or project (in addition to what looks like a 60-80% time fixed contract for 2019. I should have the time for this)
• Finally build a profitable side hustle! (I'm not sure if it will be a software product, a non-software product, or another shot at an e-commerce store. I suppose since it's a fresh start this year, I have to be honest with myself about Siren Apparel. The bottom line is that nobody visits the site! I'm going to deactivate our Shopify subscription this month and leave up the website as a boutique made-to-order store.)
• Earn at least $1000 through my Skillshare course(s) (I've only got one up so far, but I have many planned in the pipeline. If it's more obviously I will be very happy!)

Miscellaneous Goals

• Read more (I even made a 'read 30 books' goal on goodreads.com - I'll aim for that first, but honestly, it should be even more for all of 2019. This is the year where I will start properly keeping track of my books on goodreads.com as well.)
• Paint more (I made a number of acrylic and watercolor pieces back in 2017, but 2018 was a very slow year in terms of physical pieces art. I published much more digital art in 2018.)
• Record and publish at least 2 songs (Acquiring the bare minimum for a home studio was also new for me in 2018, at least in the last half of 2018. I'm learning just how hard recording and sounding with a professional microphone is. It will take practice and some good songwriting, but I am confident to release a few songs this year, more if there is time.)
• Run a marathon (fitness itself was not a problem for me in 2018, I did some massive hikes in the summer, which is a kind of tradition for me, but I just couldn't find the time - or courage (?) - to go out and do one 😂)
• More winter hiking/ski touring (this is a weird one, but I realized in all of 2018 I used my snowshoes twice for two winter hikes... granted, I went skiing a lot as well last year, but, I mean, I live in Austria, there is really no excuse not to be out and about in the mountains on the weekend, including hiking!)