To all 10 of my blog readers, a very late (albeit still joyous) Happy New Year! It has certainly been ages since my last blog post. 6 months, can you believe that?

Life has improved greatly since being employed with the State of Alaska - Department of Natural Resources as of August 2021. Sadly though my time and attention to this blog was lost.

In addition to adjusting to my new 40 hour work weeks, I am also finding how to use my limited free time. I’ve done some digital painting and rewarded myself with some video games. I do weightlifting or calisthenics every so often. But most of all I’ve just been enjoying the cold Winter of Alaska, surprisingly.

I turned 26 last November. I bought my family Christmas presents, and was happy to do so.

And then 2022 arrived.

But before getting into that, let’s take a look at 2021 in recap.

January 2021 - Arrive in Washington, with plans to join the Army. I began applying to different jobs in the meantime. One of these was Per Scholas’ Full-Stack Application Development Manager course, with a guaranteed Infosys interview at the end of 15 weeks.

February 2021 - May 2021 - Full Stack ADM course, full time. Experiment with Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. Began micro-investing in the stock market.

May 2021 - Move to Alaska, enrolled for a semester at UoPeople, and began job searching again. Get rejected from Infosys and Pendo.io. Applied to Apple and Google apprenticeships, but didn’t even receive rejection letters. :(

July 2021 - Receive a job offer from State of Alaska

August 2021 - Began work with the Department of Natural Resources.

And everything since then has been a bit of a blur. In October, due to the Coronavirus Pandemic I switched to working from home full time. Now in January, we are back to the office.

Programming / Art

At work I’ve been mostly focused on .NET Core MVC, Entity Framework, Microsoft SQL Server, and a small portion of Python.

I’ve been wanting to improve in Javascript but that is particularly slow. I have made a few simple things in Vue.js and began working on some MERN stack tutorials.

I haven’t done much with Machine Learning or Artificial Intelligence for the last few months.

I’ve been reading a bit more. My booklist includes Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!, Einstein’s Fridge, and 4000 Weeks: Time Management for Mortals. I only read when there’s time and it feels appropriate.

The books I finished last year include Atomic Habits and How to Live by Derek Sivers.

And just today I got accepted into a Per Scholas Alumni course offering, Google’s UX/UI Design course on Coursera. So that will be a 6 month undertaking on top of work.

Below, you can see a painting that took me months. I started it in about July, working on it every few weeks when I felt the urge.

It’s only now, months later, that I feel it’s 90% finished. I say that because I’m still testing out different ideas with this painting :)

Lessons learned from 2021

Family is important, as long as the relationships are healthy.

Otherwise, a little distance is beneficial.

Mental and Spiritual Health has a lot to do with feeling secure within yourself. Having a job and the financial means to support yourself is one of the most peace-of-mind things you can do, more beneficial than all the hours of reading, meditation and careful planning combined.

We are limited. In skill, in what we can accomplish, in stamina, in emotion, and in time. We are limited. Acknowledge that we are imperfect, human, beings and it’s more than just ok to be who you are.

Love your limits.

Ambitions are not to be taken lightly. I have learned this year that we can become addicted to over-work and accomplishment, just like alcohol or gambling.

It is not accomplishing our goals that satisfies us. It’s the pride of moving towards those goals. It’s the emotional feedback after all our effort starts to show tidbits and pieces of the results we seek.

Ambition is a powerful force that can take us far in our journey. Because forgetting to enjoy the journey, and to rush to “what’s next” is also a form of delusion.

So choose balance instead. Clock out and be proud of it. Take forever and a day for personal projects. Go out and enjoy a meal at a new restaurant, watch a movie, and play some video games.

Don’t dedicate solely to work and ambitions. The present moment is all we have.

Use it freely.

Thank you for your patience.

Love from the Pacific North West

Chris