Moving Toward 2021
It's the first time I try this exercise. It's time to wrap up 2020 and set sail toward 2021.
3 min read
January 2, 2021
2020
Last year, I left my hometown and I was supposed to spend the whole years abroad as a digital nomad. My first stop was Mexico City. I fell in love with the city and the culture. Destiny brought me back home as I could not travel to my next destination. France and Hungary were not accessible anymore due to the pandemic. So I went back home instead. This was a tough decision. I was worried about how bad things could go and decided that being close to my family was the right thing to do.
I could have remained super demoralized. Trust me I was. But I decided to shift my sight to other objectives. I massively improve my cooking skills and I couldn't be happier about it. I really love cooking and I'm glad I can cook a great meal to share with my relatives. I learned lots of new tricks and I now try to cook almost everything by hand. Jam, pickles, sourdough, granola, mayonnaise, etc.
Since I had enjoyed Mexico so much, I decided to continue Spanish learning at my local university. In total, I completed three classes and I happily consume a lot of Latin American books, music and shows to further improve my skills.
Let's not forget that this year I ran my first half-marathon, I ran 30k for fun on a sunny Sunday in September and I cumulated a total of 1200km on Strava. Cheers to that!
2021
At the end of 2020, I decided to quit my self-imposed schedule of 60+ hours of coding. I worked on several side projects and wanted to slow down a bit. I started reading a lot. I was an avid reader as a kid but I stopped taking the time to do it at the end of highschool So that's my first goal for 2021. I want to read 52 books. At least one per week. This is an ambitious objective and I would be seriously happy if I managed to read at least 40 books. But I like challenges 🙃. I will also try to switch back and forth between non-fiction and fiction. If I can manage it, I'll read all my fiction books in Spanish to help improve my vocabulary.
Also, I would like to reach the 2000 km milestone this year. I started my Strava journey a bit late in 2020 and this should be easily achievable as I boasted an average of 42km per week in November and December.
Last year, I integrated my Spotify and Github history into my website and I'll try to do the same with Goodread and Strava to have my personal stats panel.
Books
Here is what I already read and what I'm currently reading. I'll try to update this often until I manage to integrate Goodreads or another system on my website :)
- Como agua para chocolate ✅
- That will never work ✅
- La casa de los espiritus ✅
- The Almanack of Naval Ravikant ✅
- Ficciones (❌ -- Too hard for now)
- The Art Of War ✅
- La vida que no elegí ✅
- The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People ✅
- Quédate conmigo ✅
- It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work ✅
- El último invierno ✅
- Speed Reading ✅
- A Beginner's Guide to the Stock Market ✅
- The Insider's Guide to Culture Change ✅
- Cien años de soledad (READING)
- The Richest Man in Babylon ✅
- Private Equity (❌)
- How to avoid a climate disaster ✅
- American Dirt ✅
- Europa: A cyberpunk chronicle ✅
- Neo Cyberpunk: The Anthology ✅
- Hyperion ✅
- The Year of Less ✅
- Weapons of Math Destruction (READING)