Category: life

Well, here we are again. Another year gone by, still essentially in quarantine, but still smiling. It’s been a good year. 

First off, Ian started his university days and is pursuing a BS in Cybersecurity at Oregon Tech. At this time, he has completed his first set of classes with straight A’s, and already registered for the next set. So proud of my best buddy. 

2021 also brought me a new job! I’m still with AWS, but have moved to a new group; I’m now Community Manager for OpenSearch! It’s really exciting to be part of an open source project with this much potential. 

At the beginning of 2021 I set a few goals for myself. Let’s go through them and see how I did. 

A look ahead to 2021: 

Read more

• For a number of years now I’d had a goal of reading 12 books, yet somehow never accomplished that. This year I made a point of it and worked at developing a habit of reading, and I accomplished my goal. In fact, I beat it and read 15 books in 2021. Happy with this, and look to read even more in 2022. 

500 lb deadlift

• Heck yeah. Accomplished. Now to work towards 525, which would be an all time best for me, then work toward 575, which would be two and a half times my current body weight. 

Garden

• We definitely made a ton of progress on the garden this year. One big accomplishment was building two 16 foot long garden permanent garden boxes. Now, in hindsight, I don’t think a garden is ever something that is truly finished; therefore I’m not positive I can call it complete, but that’s the point isn’t it – keep learning, growing, and getting better with the garden. 

Certification

• Didn’t accomplish this one, but as mentioned above I’ve moved to a new role and this goal will change for the coming year. 

Simplify

• This one was just so-so in 2021, and similar to the garden, I don’t think it’s something that I’ll ever truly finish; just keep working on it.

Goals for 2022

Strength goals

• Deadlift: 525 – which would be an all time PR for me. Once that is mine, I’ll keep working towards 575 – which will be two and a half times my body weight. 
• Bench Press: 315 – bench has always been my worst lift. I’m going to finally hit 3 plates this year. 
• Squat: 500 – this may be a stretch goal, but I’m going to work towards it. 

Practice

• I do miss Hsi Lai temple quite a bit and I still haven’t found a place up here that I can practice with others. There is a small zen center not far from here that I intend on looking into. 

Reorganize the garage gym

• I’m so fortunate to have this gym. It keeps me motivated and is open whenever I need it. One thing I need to do is reorganize the garage a bit to make better use of the space. As an example, I bought barbell racks but haven’t been able to mount them on the wall yet due to my reverse hyper being in the way. 

Read more

• 2021 was a fantastic year for developing my reading habit. Now I can work to dive into even more reading material. 

OpenSearch

• As the community manager for this open source project, I’m not typically answering technical questions. That said, I intend on diving into the product this year to see how I can better understand the needs of the community members. Plus, it’s honestly really interesting looking software.

Garden

• Not necessarily a goal, but I plan to continue building our garden and learning what I can along the way. 

Git/GitHub/Markdown

• Just something I want to learn / get better at. I’ve long been interested in the idea of building my own digital garden – may work on that this year.

As usual, there will likely be new goals I set for myself throughout the year, but this is a good start.