My Wants for 2019

It could be argued that you do not (should not) need to wait for a new year to begin just to follow new goals and dreams. However, a new year symbolizes rebirth and new beginnings. A chance to begin anew…and so on. With that said, here is a list of things I want to accomplish in the new year.

Learning

iOS development has always been something on my "yeah, at some point" mental list but in the past week I realized that I need to learn it to create a client for my social network. I purchased some courses from Ray Wenderlich's site1 eons ago and am just now going through it. That reminds me, I have plenty of courses purchased from Udemy that I have not revisited (8 of them involve Blender and/or using Blender with Unity)…I will get back to them, at some point.

Product Launches

I had an epiphany a couple weeks ago regarding online products and services. When you distill them to the basics, what people are paying for/getting is access to an API wrapped in a UI.

This gave me the sudden realization that a majority of my planned products (projects really) have suffered from me getting stuck on the UI. A friend called it "analysis paralysis" and that sums it up perfectly. I came into the tech space via web design and development, so I am trained to think of the UI first and foremost. However, as the back-end developer as well I have to adjust my thinking to prioritize the functionality over how pretty something looks/feels. This may sound like a no-brainer to you, dear reader, but when you are inside your own head it is not so obvious. The functionality informs the UI/UX and vice-versa, it's a balance.

Here is a non-exhaustive list of just SOME of my languished projects I would love to turn into products:

web browser

domain portfolio management tool

web app deployer

analytics service

operating system

process management for servers

content-management system

IMAP server proxy and client

social network

eCommerce platform

lifestyle brand

Some of these are already in active progress and I think it is totally possible to achieve 90% of this list by next year's end.

Music

I used to produce music and rap over my own beats and it gave me another outlet to express myself. Retro/futuristic/jazzy beats and (I thought) dope rhymes, haha! A number of factors contributed to the demise of that particular activity, least of which was starting a family. In my pre-family days I could have complete silence and uninterrupted workflow for hours. That simply does not exist for me now.

I think I could get back to creating music in many small spurts of time. What a luxury, time is.

Video

I upgrade my iPhone every year and the camera gets better year over year. Additionally, I have a couple ideas for short films so I should be taking full advantage of this fantastically capable device. I have a Vimeo account for a reason. Yeesh.

And…

As usual, I just want to become a better version of myself and hopefully not deal with much strife on the way. Parenting is hard, relationships are hard, LIFE is hard. My quest to make things a bit easier, continues. 🕸