The Library Phantasmagoria

Goals for 2021

Added:
By Ariel

Goals

2021 didn't start out very well for me. My father passed away shortly before the new year. However, I don't think I need to commit to 2021 being a bad year. I believe it can be good - and I plan to do my best to make it that way.

Career Goals

To begin, my career goals. This is the year I graduate, and I'd like to ideally get a job before the start of Summer. Even more ideally: a public sector job in digital forensics. I'd also like to get at least one certification. The Cyber Security First Responder was recommended to me and is what I'll likely pursue.

Money Goals

  1. Find a working money management system. Mint is nice, but I've heard less-than-stellar things about the parent company. GNUcash seems more oriented toward businesses than personal finance, and it doesn't work for automatically fetching information from banks and cards.
  2. Start saving long-term. This is more reserved for the second half of the year once I begin my career. I already have some longer term savings, but those have primarily come from birthday money over the years.
  3. Be picky about buying things. As a college student and early adult, buying the cheap option is often very tempting. However, cheap doesn't often mean "good" or "long lasting". For example, the PS3EYE camera is only $13, but doesn't have nearly the quality of a $100 Logitech c922. As someone that needs a camera for school and work, its worth the investment.
    The same goes for clothing. I'm no longer a kid and growing out of my clothes is much less of a concern. I want to focus on comfortable and long-lasting clothes instead of price.

Athletic Goals

  1. Lose weight to reach a goal of 180lb. I doubt this can be accomplished in one year. I don't even know my current weight but I can assume its over 260lb. The last time I was at ~180lb was 2017, and I felt much better about my body back then.
    Most of this goal revolves around improving my diet. I eat a lot. I stress-eat even more. Its a weakness, and I need to fix it. My dad's weight hurt his health a lot, and I don't want (and I don't think he would want for me) to experience the same thing as him.
  2. Get back into archery. My cousin has very graciously offered to let me use her backyard for archery practice - saving me a few hundred dollars on a membership to the only archery club I know of in Delaware. I plan to take her up on the offer once the weather improves.

Social Goals

  1. Post at least once a month to each blog. Both here and my technical blog don't get used as much as I'd like. I want to get over the anxiety I have for posting.
  2. Join at least 2 communities and be active in them. I don't really care what communities - nerdy IRC servers, game-themed Discord servers, or just some Mastodon instance. I want to find a place where I can make friends and learn to be more social. Once again, this requires getting over anxiety for posting.
    Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are all hard-nos. I'm not interested in fighting algorithms.
  3. Stream on Twitch at least twice a month. I have a green screen now. I want to use it. Makes sense.

Conclusion

These seem like reasonable goals. Now I just need to act on them.