2020 Year-End Retrospective
Contents
Intro
This past year has been a wild one to say the least but I can say that this was a definitely year of growth and learning for me, so in this post I'll go over what all I worked on and learned throughout the year to better emphasize what all happened.
For a bit of backstory on the where my year started, I had just quit my job in February due to some family situations and shortly after had to sell my house and move cities, then of course Covid-19 affected pretty much everything in the US.
Learning
I had a lot free time after leaving my job and took the opportunity to download and purchase some programming and system administration books to better teach myself the things I wanted to learn in 2019.
So from that I learned and took self-taught courses in these subjects;
- C
- C++
- Ruby
- LaTeX
- Haskell
- Org-Mode
- Emacs 27 + Elisp
- Common Lisp (SBCL)
- Object Oriented and Functional Programming
- Guix GNU Distribution + Guix Package Manager + Guile
- Linux System Administration - RHEL + Debian-based systems
You can read more on what books I read in this post regarding my 2020 Completed Books.
Some other notable things that I learned about this year were;
- IPFS - File-sharing and hosting protocol
- Gemini - Protocol much like gopher but better
Creating
In 2020 I started a couple of projects that either I stopped due to hitting a brick wall or stopped due to lack of motivation (unfortunately). So here's a couple of the project I worked on in 2020;
Bash Projects
| Entry | Description |
|---|---|
| Covid Data | A bash script that provides data on Covid-19 in the command-line. |
| MARBS | LARBS fork focused on Emacs |
Crystal Lang Projects
| Entry | Description |
|---|---|
| Cycling Data | A command-line application that consumes and parses cycling data. |
| CrISBN | Crystal Library for handling ISBNs and books |
| CrWikiLib | Crystal Library for Handling WikiPedia/Media API calls |
| CrFetch | Light, system agnostic Crystal Application that shows system information. |
| New Reads | Crystal/Amber based webapp that follows CRUD and MVC and stores books and book info for users |
Other
| Entry | Description |
|---|---|
| Frugal Living Guide | A collection of text that can be shared regarding frugal living. |
| Material Git | My self-hosted Gitea server |
Philosophy
I felt this year I was somewhat able to conquer a feeling or a fear that has held me back a lot in regards to enjoying certain things, that fear being completing or finishing something. I believe this fear came from a young age when I would hold on to certain moments in time rather than the whole of an experience due to not wanting something to end. It might sound silly or weird but I really do fear finishing books, movies or even games because I want to only enjoy them for that moment in time and feel as though I can come back at any point. This year I was able to finish more books and games this year than any other year I've been logging those things.
2021
Plans
For 2021 I plan to continue learning and continue to better myself even though the future may be uncertain.
Moving Back To Guix
I had been working with Guix earlier this year and really enjoyed it, but unfortunately due to the limited internet at my place of residence currently I cannot properly maintain or work on the system and instead have relied on Arch as my main distro of choice for work (I use arch btw). If I don't go for Guix then perhaps another GNU distro with StumpWM as the window manager and just focus on mainly using emacs for everything.
Company Plans
So I had some plans for my personal company that are somewhat in the works right now, that of which I'll dedicate an entire post for at least, but with that said I plan to change what my company does and redesign the website to match the new focus of the company. I can however tease that I will be setting up services for others to use such as a Git service, a Gemini server, and some other ideas along-side some physical products.
Final
I believe 2021 will be a better year and now with 2020 under my belt I feel more prepared for what is to come in the future.
TLDR;
- Read More Books
- Finished More Things
- Pursued Things that spark joy
- Living more minimal
- Do better next year