Another Year Around the Sun
It is my birthday week and I am busily preparing for the next year. I know that sounds odd, most people celebrate their birthdays, they don’t prepare for anything other than a good meal perhaps. I instead take my birthdays a little different than most. I like to treat them like New Years Eve where I sit down and take stock of my life and where I want to go in the next year. The benefit of this is two fold, first – I can actually enjoy New Years without worrying about resolutions I’ll never keep. Two – there is no better time to review your life than when you’ve finished another full rotation around the sun. It is a natural time to review what went right and what went wrong.
What Is Next
This next year will be a big year for me. The first item on my list is to improve my career knowledge. I am way too far behind in my coursework. I did think about a master’s degree starting next year, and if so I want all of these certifications and readings I am working on to be done. I am going to allocate more time to it, but most importantly, I am going to reduce fracturing my time amongst all of these priorities. I am like 20% through ten different things. If I’d of focused more, I’d be 100% done with two things. Focuses this year include Python, Cloud technology, and certifications.
The second item is more personal. My last birthday only found me wanting to do one thing – improve my health. That worked well but there is more to do there, specifically surrounding nutrition. My weight lifting changed my life for sure, everything feels good on me right now – my back, my feet, my core. Food is naturally the next focus. You can’t out-train a bad diet. More protein means more gain. Less sugar means clearer thinking. More fiber means internal health. More vitamins means healthy aging. I will improve the way I eat because I’m also increasing my training time. That’s hard to do when you eat poorly, so that is the first stop.
The next item on my list is relationship building. I’m convinced happiness lies in those you surround yourself with. Possessions really don’t mean that much. It is the people in your life and your relationship with them that is important. There is no other path forward to happiness that does not include having quality relationships in it. I admit, I have left some relationships with friends wither on the vine. I am lucky in that I am on excellent terms with my wife and children, but there are other family members and friends that I can improve upon (and most likely new people to become friends with also).
Finally, and why I am creating this post, is that I hope to get back into writing. I’ve been asked by friends and colleagues more and more recently if I write still, and the embarrassed answer from me is always “not really.” This doesn’t mean I put it on the back burner, it just means I dedicated so much energy to other things. I am hoping to redirect some energy back into blogging and the growth that comes with it.
Methodology
I am a big fan of being deliberate in my actions. I find that being loosey goosey about how I spend my times leaves me with intentions never realized. To do this requires a tool that can help you set these intentions and give you a way to manage them. I utilize the Roterunner Purpose Planner. This is an amazing planning and journaling tool. I’ve used a few electronic versions of these types of formats but I find myself coming back to something physical, something I can hold. The Purpose Planner is of course your standard planner with a calendar, but it includes a lot of different trackers for you to use. There are habit trackers, food loggers, sleep loggers, pages for journaling, spaces for goal setting, and plenty of prompts and useful quotes. I’m now six months into using this thing and I am going to continue using it for the next six months also.
My learning is based on a boatload of courses I purchased from Udemy. I have courses on Apache Airflow/Spark, Agile/Scrum, and lot of Python. I also have a year long subscription to A Cloud Guru and courses there on cloud technology (AWS and Azure) and lots of DevOps tools (Docker, Kubernetes,CI/CD pipelines). I also have a substantial physical library to read also on Data Lakes, SQL, Python, and Java. There is much to learn and I am hungry to get at it.
Thanksgiving
No end of year would be complete without giving thanks to the previous one. I am thankful for being employed the last year, having completed my sixth year with my current employer. I am thankful for my Scouting family, those youth I’ve been able to impact, and my fellow leaders I’ve grown with so much together. I am thankful for my wife and children, that they are healthy, and that I am also. I am thankful for all of these amazing resources to improve my knowledge, my health, and my life. I am thankful for the Dutchmen and my friends at NKFF and what they’ve done for me. There is much gratitude to share with the world and I hope to spend another turn around this sun experiencing more.