Resolutions

as of

Starting with a Twitter thread, I've been publicly documenting my New Year's Resolutions and my performance in completing them every year since 2018. I'm gonna try to update my progress here as well. Resolutions that have a decided status will have a symbol next to them that tells its result: ✓ means success, ✕ means not reached, ○ means not quite reached, "nullified" means it's been thrown out.

2021

  1. Write at least 5 blog posts in a language other than English
  2. Speak and understand spoken French
  3. Reach at least $5k in revenue for MEZCLA
  4. Rollerskate backwards as well as I do forwards

2020

  1. Read, write, and speak Mandarin at an elementary level | ✓
  2. Have a vendor publicly disclose a security vulnerability I’ve found | ✓
  3. Speak and understand spoken French | ✕
  4. Read at least 15 books | ✕
  5. Stay in at least 20 new cities for at least a night | ○
  6. Develop perfect pitch | ✕

2019

  1. Give at least two (2) in-person tech courses or non-course talks. | ✓
  2. Write and publish at least 6 cryptography articles. | ○
  3. Attend at least 3 off-campus conferences or hackathons. | ○
  4. Gain a semi-professional grasp of a(nother) romance language other than Spanish, preferably French. | ○
  5. Contribute to two (2) FOSS projects with at least 100 stars: one (1) in Rust and one (1) in Go. | ○
  6. Get a 4.0 in both semesters. | ○
  7. Read at least 15 books. | ✓
  8. Gain an elementary level grasp of Chinese. | ✕
  9. Visit at least 40 new places in the cities I stay in. | ✓
  10. 599a6b0e4d406c157da2578718209c47f58250ee5e4f375e1d7a83a4f35aaf43 | nullified

Conclusion

Mid-year check-in

End of year conclusion

2018

  1. Be an upper echelon blockchain developer and have a noticeable influence in the space | nullified
  2. Complete freshman year of university with at least a 3.5 GPA | ✓
  3. Commit on GitHub at least once a day every day | ✕
  4. Found my first company | ✓
  5. Publish at least 3 high level articles about cryptocurrencies | ✕
  6. Publish 2 low level/introductory articles about cryptocurrencies | ✕
  7. Publish at least 3 articles about Quantitative Finance/Risk Management one day | ✕

Conclusion

Pulled from the Twitter thread.

So now that the year and subsequently this thread come to a close I'll say that I've changed and learned a lot about myself this year.

I drifted away from writing this year and actually picked up reading a lot more. I found it extremely difficult to muster up courage to draft an article even on paper, but I was happy to get and finish new books and read journals, research papers, whitepapers, and technical specs

This year I've seen myself grow as a developer, as I've started to contribute much more frequently to open source projects with large codebases and communities (even though *every* PR wasn't merged). I've noticed that I enjoy front end development, although idk if its something I want to focus on in the future. I'm drifting toward development on the server side, as I've started taking an interest in backend, security, and systems. I even noticed that I don't particularly like statistics: I enjoy learning computing theory, discrete math, and the like

I've come full circle once again and am into security (the reason I got into computing). This time around, I like applied cryptography and privacy, as opposed to penetration testing and web app security. This is probably another reason why I enjoy blockchain/cryptocurrency since they mix cryptography with two other things I like: economics and finance. I also got some experience running a company and I've definitely learned a lot wrt marketing, accounting, and all the other stuff that entails entrepreneurship. Although I've shut the company down because I wasn't particularly motivated after a while, I now know what I'd appreciate in future ventures and how to keep my own attention in that regard

I've learned so many things that would make this thread even longer than it already is, but I'll close it out saying that 2018 was unexpectedly a year where I learned more about myself. It had ups and downs but every day was surely a day for learning and a day to remember.

Thanks to everyone for making it so enjoyable and I appreciate you all simply for being yourselves. I'll start my 2019 resolution thread tomorrow, but thank you for a wonderful 2018!