Personal Blog

News Flash! I’m not perfect…

In my last post, I detailed an extensive schedule of all the stuff I wanted to do. Like a template to help guide me toward staying on track day by day toward my goals. After the first month of the year, as a surprise to no one, I didn’t exactly stick to my schedule very well. In fact, I didn’t stick to it much at all. In the mornings I’ve watched some Pluralsight videos and finished some FreeCodeCamp exercises but in the evenings after work, I spent just about half as much time as I would have liked to on projects and learning tasks. After all, I knew it would be impossible to do everything in that last blog post. I didn’t expect to really get into these more strict habits until closer to the end of the year. So this month I’ll do what I can to keep on improving. It’s all a process.

Excuse One: I have a new girlyfriend

If I had any excuses for deviating from the schedule, the main one would be that I’ve started dating someone who has provided a far better use of my time than sitting at my computer 90 hours per day slaving away on projects. Just sitting and talking to her is amazing, going out and doing things with her is incredibly fun, and I really think I found something worth keeping with her. Usually, after seeing someone for a month or two I’ll naturally identify a few little red flags about them I don’t like so much, but with her – I haven’t seen any of those. At all. It’s refreshing. She’s a teacher, working on two Master’s degrees, incredibly smart and fun, nice and loving, all the things. She’s definitely provided some much-needed inspiration and support with getting going on my own work. So, I want to enjoy this because I feel it is going to last. With her, I see hints of a new type of life to build toward that feels ever more fulfilling than a life spent trying to run a rat-wheel race with my own endless ambitions all the time.

Excuse Two: I have a new workyjob

Another excuse for my lack of absolute perfection in my schedule keeping could be my new job. As of January 6th, I got promoted! Yay for me. I’ve moved from a job in Configuration Management to one as a fully-fledged Software Developer. I’m now in charge of a full Vue.js web application that tracks how up-to-date the training and certifications are for personnel at the 416th Flight Test Squadron at Edwards Airforce Base. I’m endlessly happy about the chance to work on code all day and learn a new framework. I’ve never worked in Vue.js before, and the backend database is something I’ve never used before either. All the people I work with directly are incredibly nice and I can tell they’re going to really help me level up my development skills. Overall, I couldn’t be more excited to see what this year brings in my professional life. Every day I’ve found myself staying late by accident just because I’m so wrapped up in work. I feel lucky about all this and I’m thanking God every day as I commute to my new office.

I still got some stuff done…

Online Learning and Audiobooks from January

With all that said, even though I wasn’t an all-out machine in January, I still did a few things. Out of the 31 days of the month I watched Pluralsight videos in 29 of them, you can see that on my profile here. There I watched videos on Vue.js and Async Javascript, both are topics I need for my day job. Less regularly, I did exercises on FreeCodeCamp on 17 of those days, getting about 60 exercises done total, mostly on CSS, Design Theory and Flexbox topics for Front-End Web Development – that profile is here. Finally, I listened to about 10 hours of Audible audiobooks while commuting. This month was finishing Jordan Peterson’s ’12 Rules for Life’ and Randal Munroe’s ‘What If?’; both of which I plan on writing a little review/report on and giving my thoughts on them in articles here on the site. I’ve started this month off with Ultralearning by Scott Young. I’m hoping it will give some insight on how I can get the best use of my time while studying and working on my projects.

A little progress on wforbes.net

For this site, this month, I’ve added a list of topics to the Software and Technology page that I aim to fill with content. That’s 6 topics that will teach an introduction to computers and technology, 6 topics on web development that can help someone get up to speed in that career, and 7 topics in computer science that will complement the material you’d get while earning a degree. Then there are 20 ideas for articles listed. The first 10 of them take a more investigative approach that explores important aspects of technology in society and how it’s shaping our current modern world. The other 10 explore topics in software education that aren’t covered in the other pages in the three sections above which I have some ideas for.

I really hope to finish all those pages and posts by the end of the year. I’ll be mostly going in order by intended skill level… but I’ll probably be taking breaks from the beginning/basics stuff to work on things that are at my current level to keep things interesting. Some of the content I’ll be taking classes on in my current studies, so I might include some of my direct notes from my Google docs to get at least some basic info up sooner. Along with my classwork, I’ll be using tons of references from the sources online that I’ve used to learn from and adding my own personal views and experience to them to make them interesting or novel where possible.

New ideas for another website

I started working on a Vue.js app that will be put on https://wforbes87.com/. This will be the place I keep projects and code that I work on and provide a space for examples in the learning pages and articles I here on https://wforbes.net/. Since this site is built on WordPress, it doesn’t always provide me the open freely codable space that my soul truly desires. I’d really like to make a cool useful site that people can make accounts and log in to, even though its obvious only a few friends may use it rarely. I’m also using Vue extensively at work, so this will give me the opportunity to practice at home on something I actually have up for the public.

Warning: Under Construction

I’ll probably update this blog post a bit in the coming days or weeks, but that’s the meat of what I have to share for now.

Stay tuned and God bless! Thanks for reading.

I’m no fortune teller and although it’s fun to think about the soothsaying divination that comes from a gift of clairvoyance, the tarot card flipping and ritualistic candle lighting that’d go into it just seems like so much more hassle than it’s really worth. In every story ever told about looking into the future things never end up being exactly what they seem to be. Promises of riches may come with a sacrifice of health, predictions of success or fame will usually come with an untold curse or calamity that balances out the equation. Even so, if we were shown what our future would be, whether it’s bad or good, we’d still have in mind what we want from life and so in spite of the psychic’s words or the fortune cookie’s description; we’d inevitably vie for what we desire over what was prescribed. Twisting fate.

I feel like looking into the future and making predictions on what’s going to happen is a little like getting the pay off before the work is done. Like getting rewarded without the proper effort or achievement. Everything in the future takes paying your dues for them, regardless of how mundane it is. You still have to wait for a boring mundane future to come. Even more so if your future includes a lot of good, desirable, positive stuff. Usually, you don’t get stuff like that for free – you’ve got to earn it – and if you knew you’d get it in the future by way of a fortune teller’s predictions, then I wonder if you’d put in the same work to get it. Thinking you’re destined for something may make you assume that it requires little effort, or it make put you at ease and you just wouldn’t put in as much effort, or the same effort… and thus end up never getting it after all. Undoing fate.

It’s far more reliable to simply put in the effort to make our future what we want it to be. We decide. Have some goals, etch out some plans, and hustle until we reach our limits – then hustle some more to break our limits and grow even further. Sounds simple enough, but putting it into action requires a consistent daily commitment. A focused spirit, a determined breath. Discipline. That can be hard enough on its own, but when we factor in all the other fun things in life that may come along to distract us, waiting around every corner to take us off course and halt our progress, it’s even more difficult than one might think. Any other bad habits carved into our lives that we’re comfortably used to stand to guide us astray as well. Often these habits are invisible to us because we’re so used to their presence or they’re so ingrained into our culture.

I’ve spent many years reading about it, watching videos on it, and talking to people about it. I’ve really tried to listen to how people feel about trying to improve their lives. All the while reflecting on my own journey through the last few years. Growing to see the incomparable importance of the subject, I can see that how we feel today has a lot to do with what we did years ago. Yet that backward hindsight thinking is difficult to come to grips with. We only ever have ourselves to blame. Changing our habits is really hard because the most problematic habits feel the best in the short term. It’s very clear that a true change for the better and a path of continuous improvement toward some new future we desire is one most intimidating and frustrating processes we could ever experience. Yet, if we can manage to invoke that change and gradually become the person we want to be, the rewards in the result are greater than anything else in life. With hard work and persistence, over time, we could do anything, be anyone.

If you want it, work for it. It’s that simple.

So if hindsight is 20/20 and we so easily see the details of our past mistakes when reflected, yet we can never return to those times to right our wrongs or fix events after the fact, I’d rather work to develop the same clarity of vision for events yet to come. A future fixer, a fortune designer. Decide my fate and put in the work to make my dreams a reality. Actually see the future and make it real. A 20/20 foresight for the year 2020. Today’s January 1st and I really clearly see who I’d like to be by December 31st.

• Accel at work as a programmer, completing a full version of the application I’m assigned, with a happy customer.
• Have $20k saved in the bank.
• Be more than 75% finished with my Bachelor’s degree.
• Get great scores on my PluralSight IQs, nearly done with Freecodecamp, and lots of progress on KhanAcademy.
• Complete a large portion of the first draft of my novel and textbook.
• Earn at least a few thousand dollars with my web development business, make reliable contacts and help others.
• Organize my massive list of resource links into a website that others find helpful.
• Be adept with Vue.js, WordPress development, and able to administer my own web server.
• Be a proficient freestyle FPV drone pilot with some awesome flight footage online.
• Be a skateboarder with higher pop and more consistent tricks, with plenty of recent video clips to show for it.
• Have a set of designs drawn up ready to be put on apparel and skateboards for a new brand.
• Finish a solo instrumental progressive rock/metal album.

This isn’t some New Years’ resolution. No ‘new year, new me’ mumbo-jumbo. It’s all the same thing I’ve been working on for a long time now, step by step, taking my failures and learning from them, running with my successes to get the most of them. Yet, the turning of the year offers a unique opportunity to see how much can get done before next year if I stay consistent in my routines and find newer better ways to do things. That way I can challenge myself to do more the year after that and so on.

In a previous blog I talked about 7 main focuses in my life I’d like to perfect:

• Study – WGU, CEH, PluralSight, FreeCodeCamp, Khan Academy
• Creative Research – Fantasy themed textbook, Telepathy/Future Novel, and Neurology
• Business – Flip websites, Indicium, Learn React.js, WordPress dev, Set up a server
• Video Editing – Learn editing, Tutorial Videos, Youtube videos (vlog, review, spotlights)
• Reading – 50 pages per day, book reports
• New Hobbies – FPV drones, Magic, D&D
• Passion Routines– Play music, Ride skateboards, Draw, Workout

Over the last couple of months since then, I’ve felt out this new set of concentrations and experimented with different schedules I could fit into my weeks to maximize my time spent. Getting better at managing my time and reducing distractions that throw me off the mark. I uninstalled most of the video games from my computer, I’ve resisted watching shows and movies in trade for stuff that, at least vaguely, follows these topics, and I’ve stopped talking about what I’m going to do in trade for what I am doing.

The next step then is to pour the concrete slab of a schedule for myself. A foundation to build the structure of my days. I can brainstorm and theorize all I want about the things I’d like to focus on – but without a set of days and times with which to work on it, it’ll all be up to what I feel like doing and when I feel like doing it. That’s what I’m trying to get away from. I feel like there’s a better way than that.

Every day I’ll wake up as early as I can. Let’s say between 4:00 am – 5:00 am. This gives 2-3 hours to get ready and work on something a little bit before I leave for work. Studying and taking a lesson or two online, along with doing some push-ups, sit-ups, and pull-ups will be perfect – my mind and my body can get a little exercise before my day starts.

After work, I’d be getting home around 5:30 pm-6:00 pm. That’d leave about 3 hours before I should start cleaning up and relaxing for bed. Each day I’ll fit in at least an hour University study, then jump to one or more of the other categories depending on the day, and start rotating through the subcategories each week – and get my reading done between audiobooks in the car on my commute and actual reading before going to sleep.

So here’s a starting point for a schedule this month:

Monday – Friday:

Morning (4 am-7 am):

• WGU school work OR PluralSight/Freecodecamp/Khanacademy (1.5 hours)
• Free research (read articles, watch videos) & Work on wforbes.net (1 hour)
• Get ready for work (30 mins)

Evening (6 pm – 9 pm):

• WGU school work (1 hour)
• Daily Focus (2 hours):
  • Monday: Creative – Work on textbook, novel, or study neurology.
  • Tuesday: Business – Work on Websites, Organize Indicium, Learn Vue.js, Learn WordPress, Set up a Server
  • Wednesday: Videos – Practice editing, Plan/Film tutorials, Plan/Film Youtube Content
  • Thursday: Business – Work on Websites, Organize Indicium, Learn Vue.js, Learn WordPress, Set up a Server
  • Friday: Hobbies/Passions – Practice FPV drone flying, Skateboarding, Music, Drawing.
• Read – 50 pages or one chapter, until sleep.

Saturday and Sunday:

• 4-6 am: PluralSight, Freecodecamp, KhanAcademy (2 hours)
• 6-10 am: WGU school work OR Free research & Work on wforbes.net (4 hours)
• 10-12pm: Creative category (2 hours)
• 12-1pm: Lunch, chill (1 hour)
• 1 – 4 pm: WGU school work OR Business category (3 hours)
• 4 – 8 pm: Video/Editing AND/OR Hobbies/Passions (4 hours)
• 8 – 10pm: Relax/Free time

I doubt I’d be able to stick to this schedule 100% all the time every day. There will be blocks of time, or even days where I give myself a break – do something else, hang out with people, or figure something else out. I won’t beat myself up if I’m not perfect and I can’t expect to keep track of every little thing. Like this Reddit post, where a user tracked the time he spent doing everything throughout 2019. You’ll notice that only 2nd to Sleeping, his ‘Waste Time’ category of activities ended up taking the largest portion of his time (some 990 hours), just as I assume mine would too if I wasn’t at least TRYING to meet schedules like the one I laid out in this post. I’m really inspired by stuff like that Reddit post though, I like the idea of keeping track of how I spend my time all year to come out with exact numbers, but I seriously doubt my ability to keep it up.

This is just a guideline. Something to use to keep myself moving in the right direction. Along with all of this, in every activity, I’m going to work to keep better and better notes in my Journal and record snippets of my activity to add to my video content. I’ll be doing at least pushup/situp/pullups every day, and possibly starting to devote an hour to the gym every day with my girlfriend. Things will change, the schedule will need adjustment, and I’ll probably always be doing other extra things in the margins and on the sidelines.

It’s my hope that, along with my previous blog articles, this is giving you ideas. Inspiring someone else out there to start getting their shit together too. I’ll keep posting here, and working on content for this site on different topics … and this time next year I’m sure I’ll have made some serious progress toward being that better version of myself and meeting these goals. Thanks for reading, Happy New Year 2020!

Turning my journal into tasks

In my last blog post, I mentioned that I’d started journaling to organize myself. It’s reshaped everything about my life and who I am. Getting everything in my head typed out into a doc has me so much more organized and capable of doing more than I ever thought possible. Coming to terms with the past, understanding the present, planning for the future. It feels like I have a second brain. 

The brain in my head used to have to manage to keep track of remembering everything, keep up with my imagination on everything, thinking about my day to day life, and making it all somehow cohesive so I can progress. Like trying to do difficult math homework, hold a witty conversation, answer a bunch of emails, plan for the future and do my taxes all while juggling a bunch of random items on a unicycle over a pool of alligators. As you get older and your life becomes more complex, it just gets to be too much.

The brain in my journal can now take care of keeping track of remembering most things. Writing forces me to express my imagination literally and put it into words to help make sense of it. Then this frees my focus to be more present in my day to day life. I can exist in the moment with people and really pay attention to them; instead of drifting in and out of my unsorted thought processes.

Since 2017 I’ve written 300+ pages (some 250k words, give or take). Although I took a break from it during the first half of this year, I’ve written 150 pages since July 2019. Much of it has had to do with putting together what I’ve found that I like doing, shaping up my daily habits, planning for the next 10 years and where I want to be at 42 years old, and combining everything I’d researched in the last few years to form a plan to keep doing more with my life. I wrote a few essays I’d like to expand on and refine in my blog here too when it’s time for it.

Now I’m doubling back through this year’s journal to summarize it for myself and turn its contents into actionable tasks to work on going forward. Looking at the next year of my life and what I’ll focus on throughout it. I’d like to keep doing what I’ve been doing recently, only better. More streamlined and focused. Managed enough to do away with needless wastes of time, but free enough to decide what I can work on depending on my mood each day.

Here’s a rough list of everything I’m doing:

• Finish my Bachelor’s in Computer Science by 2021 (https://wgu.edu)
• Get my Ethical Hacking Certification before 2020, and my CSSLP before 2021
• Learn the C++ programming language with professional proficiency
• Work on my video game to practice my Java (and C++), and Game dev skills (Omnia, 2013 project)
• Flip (buy and resell) websites and business opportunities for profit and passive income
• Take online tutorials daily to broaden my knowledge (PluralSight, Freecodecamp, Khan, etc)
• Practice editing videos on Adobe Premier
• Compile my school work and research to write articles and create video tutorials based on them
• Post videos on my YouTube channel: Vlogs, Product Reviews, YouTube Channel Spotlights.. etc.
• Read at least 50 pages (or one chapter) from a book each day
• Write book report articles on the books I complete to sum them up
• Research and study neurology with the goal of working with neurologists as a programmer
• Write tutorials/textbooks styled like a fantasy RPG D&D choose your adventure book
• Write a novel centered around telepathy and future technology
• Organize and expand my Indicium project – a repository of useful and interesting web links
• Learn the React.js framework
• Get better at WordPress development
• Build a web application that makes a game out of blogging and journaling
• Build a web application that gives insights and research info based on browsing history
• Build a prototype for [proprietary idea] … more info on that soon.
• Set up and run a physical web server (Windows & Linux)
• Learn how to fly Freestyle FPV drones (like this)
• Learn to play Magic: the Gathering well and win a Friday night tournament
• Learn D&D and start playing it with a group of friends regularly
• Play and write music at least once a week (Exits Exist)
• Skateboard at least once a week
• Draw on my tablet at least 5 hours per week (learn photoshop/illustrator)
• Work out at least 8 hours per week

“Time Is A Concept”

First, I know already that everything I’m planning to do and already doing is more than my schedule can handle to excel at most of it. I work a fulltime job (8 hours per day) and I’m taking fulltime classes for another 4 hours per day. With the remaining 4 hours I have each day during the week and another 8 hours per day on the weekend: an accumulated approximated 30-40 hours to spare at the most… I have some room to work on other things but not much.

I know I won’t be able to work on all of this all the time. Avoiding burnout is really important. I’m sure I’ll try making schedules for myself and drop the ball on them. Plan things out and then change the plans. That’s ok with me. I won’t read that much every day at first, I might never be good at Magic any time soon, or flip a single website successfully. I won’t beat myself up about it if that’s the case. In truth, I have 10 years from right now to get it right. 

I wrote a detailed 10-year plan that tracks my estimated income and expenses, concentrations and projected focuses, with alternate plans for problems arising – like failing health, losing work, and other misdirections. More on that later.

The main idea here is that without this journal, this list and these ideas, I wouldn’t ever have a chance at getting anywhere close to accomplishing these things. This list and set of goals I’m forming is just an upper bound goal to keep reaching for this year and this blog post is an opportunity to break the ice and start writing about it.

I think the key is forming my tasks to accumulate together. Kill multiple birds with one stone. Everything having to do with learning software and writing code can be considered one big project, everything with videos and tutorials are another. Researching and writing articles can be done in the same set time of my schedule as studying for subjects in school and taking tutorials, and the new hobbies I’d like to learn can all be given the same time slot during the week that gets rotated out with one of them being focused on at a time. 

There is a way to manage all this and it’s my overarching main goal to be able to do that successfully by October 2020 and then keep getting better at it until 2030. Let’s see where I am when that time comes.

Birds and Stones

Study

• Finish my Bachelor’s in Computer Science by 2021 (https://wgu.edu)
• Get my Ethical Hacking Certification before 2020, and my CSSLP before 2021.
• Take online tutorials daily to broaden my knowledge (PluralSight, Freecodecamp, Khan, etc)

Studying and taking classes at home affords me the opportunity to also listen to videos and take notes for certifications and other stuff. Bouncing back and forth between tasks when I get bored or reach a stopping point with each one has been a really good workflow for me. I’m actually currently projected to graduate WGU by 2023… so finishing by the end of 2021 is incredibly accelerated. Like I said earlier, this is an upper bound to reach for. Graduating by 2021 is the best possible achievement I could ask for here, that’d be a maniacal pace. Good thing I’m a maniac. Those three items can be combined to be something simple like… ‘Study’. 

What’s next?

Creative Research

• Research and study neurology with the goal of working with neurologists as a programmer (and understanding the brain in more depth)
• Write tutorials/textbooks styled like a fantasy RPG D&D choose your adventure book
• Write a novel centered around telepathy and future technology

These are less important things to study but will require a different pace and they really don’t have much in the way of a time restriction. The work with neurology won’t be that important until I have my Master’s degree. The fantasy styled tutorials are just a fun idea I worked on one day that I’d like to continue. The novel has been in progress on and off since 2016, and who knows when it’ll be good enough to say what I want it to say? So these are like.. ‘Creative Research’. 

And then there’s…

Business

• Flip (buy and resell) websites and business opportunities for profit and passive income.
• Organize and expand my Indicium project – a repository of useful and interesting web links
• Learn the React.js framework
• Get better at WordPress development
• Build a web application that makes a game out of blogging and journaling
• Build a web application that gives insights and research info based on browsing history
• Build a prototype for [proprietary idea] … more info on that soon.
• Set up and run a physical web server (Windows & Linux)

It’s very clear to me that working a day job, even if it pays reasonably well, is not going to provide enough to do all the extra very important things that go into having a GREAT life. I don’t just want to scrape by and have a GOOD life. I want it to be great like Tony the Tiger would say. These important things include: being able to actually HELP others and provide meaningful value to their lives, travel and see more of the world than just this Californian desert I’ve been mostly relegated to, save for retirement so I can begin a new career and have freedom when I reach my 50s, and finally – do fun cool projects ‘n’ stuff.

I figure that starting a technology company is the best way to go right now, with what I know how to do already and what I want to know how to do in the future. With considerations on the type of people I want to be around in my life, and the type of people I want to be able to help consistently. The plan for this company is something for a later blog post, but roughly I figure that starting small and just flipping websites like people flip houses is my safest bet. I can hold profitable websites for passive income, make large flips and collect big revenues when the opportunity arises, and get more knowledgable about what goes into a successful online business. From there, building web applications and native apps on mobile or desktop would be a natural next step. Then on to building and producing devices that harness the new technology on the horizon after that. I intend to focus on Business to Business verticals and stay insulated from the ups-and-downs of consumer trends or market instability. File this stuff under… “Business”.

And on to the next…

Video Editing

• Practice editing videos on Adobe Premier
• Compile my school work and research to write articles and create video tutorials based on them
• Post videos on my YouTube channel: Vlogs, Product Reviews, YouTube Channel Spotlights.. etc.

Alright so, YouTube is huge and online video has a more broad and inclusive audience now more than ever. Most people have phones and laptops that can stream and play 1080p and 4k video, the quality of all of it is really prime now. So.. editing videos, even at a novice level for my own stuff is really important. I could write all the articles in the world, but if everyone is much more receptive to watching a video on it instead – why not try to provide that?

It struck me that most people can’t go to college and they may never be exposed to coding and technology topics. Getting into something like software development really requires a lot of context and introductory knowledge to get off the ground and understand the lay of the land. If I can do something to make it more accessible and fun to get into, I think that’d be a great use of time. File these under “Video work”. 

Continuing…

Reading

• Read at least 50 pages (or one chapter) from a book each day
• Write book report articles on the books I complete to sum them up

So far this year I’ve gotten through 5 or 6 audiobooks and started reading a few physical ones. My eyes are far far better at reading text on a screen right now than they are on paper, but I think it’d be a really important habit to just bake into my days consistently. After selling books on Amazon back in 2016, I have a huge pile of them left over ready to get started. It will just be a matter of carving through that and picking up new titles (I’ve purchased like 14 books in just the last few months). Most importantly though, I believe that writing summaries and thoughts on what I read will really drive it home and make the activity more meaningful. I’ve noticed people will speed through audiobooks, racking up dozens and dozens of them … but how is all that new knowledge cemented in their mind? I have no idea. For me to get the most value from reading, I will need to reflect on everything and what better way than little book reports like revisiting 3rd grade? Categorize these under “Read”.

Next…

New Hobbies

• Learn how to fly Freestyle FPV drones (like this)
• Learn to play Magic: the Gathering well and win a Friday night tournament
• Learn D&D and start playing it with a group of friends regularly

Learning these are just things I always wanted to do but never knew anyone that did them. There’s other stuff I could add to this list too, but this is enough for now. Won’t take a whole lot of time, but will require commitment to regularly doing them and adding to my knowledge on them. Label them “New Hobbies”.

Finally…

Passion Routines

• Play and write music at least once a week (Exits Exist)
• Skateboard at least once a week
• Draw on my tablet at least 5 hours per week (learn photoshop/illustrator)
• Work out at least 8 hours per week

These last four are things I’d be doing WAY too much of if I wasn’t on this new way of living, in fact, I think they’d be all I would be doing. I don’t know how to balance the time I spend on them yet. I feel like for stuff like Skateboarding or Drawing, I will either not do them at all for months at a time or spend all day on them everyday and not look up for months at a time, 10 hours at a time, no limits, all chips in. So learning to balance it will be the biggest challenge for me. In truth I’d like to start a clothing/skateboard brand and sell my designs/artwork printed on products, but that’s not really in my scope right this moment… but may be added if I can do these routinely.I’d categorize this under “Passion Routines”.

Summary: From 25 to 6

Ok so what do we have from that? Boiled down 25 subtopics into 6 main topics:

• Study – WGU, CEH, PluralSight, FreeCodeCamp, Khan Academy
• Creative Research – Neurology, Fantasy themed textbook, Telepathy/Future Novel
• Business – Flip websites, Indicium, Learn React.js, WordPress dev, Set up server
• Video Editing – Learn editing, Tutorial Videos, Youtube videos (vlog, review, spotlights)
• Reading – 50 pages, book reports
• New Hobbies – FPV drones, Magic, D&D
• Passion Routines– Play music, Ride skateboards, Draw, Workout

Although this is all the same amount of tasks and activities as we started with, categorizing and combining them suddenly makes them manageable. There are 7 days in a week, at least three of those topics are daily routine kinds of things(study, read, passions.. maybe new hobbies); so really I’m looking at just planning weekly blocks of time for three pursuits here: Creative Research, Business, and Video Editing. I’m imaging that right now, I’d best serve these by really spending multiple hours on them in each sitting.

Now I suppose my job will be to work out a schedule for myself and start a checklist every week to make sure I hold myself to task. Thanks for reading, I’m looking forward to sharing more about all of this when I can.

(Originally published 10/23/19 on  https://wforbes.blogspot.com/2019/10/looking-at-whats-next.html  )

Today’s a new day. Just like any other, but what makes today somewhat unique is that I’m writing a blog post on it. I spent the last few years working on myself and my career. I told myself that sooner or later I’d start blogging about it, and I guess today is both sooner and later – go figure.

Recent Successes

This year I got a great job working for a military contractor in IT. Thanks to that job, I got my CompTIA Security+ certification, and I’m working toward some more certifications in the same vein. CEH, CSSLP, etc. I’ve been getting straight A’s at my local community college for about a year now and I was just accepted to the Computer Science Bachelor’s Degree program at Western Governor’s University, starting on 10/1/19.

Journaling and Writing

What I’m most proud of and what’s helped me progress the most is the 300+ pages of research related journal entries I’ve written. Close to every day I write about the stuff I’m interested in as I learn more about them. I write about the things that are going on with me in my life. That way I get the chance to bring my thoughts out of my head and organize them coherently. Doing this, I’m twice as productive and three times more organized now than I ever was in my life. I’m honestly very surprised that more people I know don’t do the same sort of thing, but maybe it’s not for everyone. Either way, I highly recommend that you try.

Break Up and Socializing More

Today I just broke up with my girlfriend of almost a year… which absolutely sucked, but I’m working through it. To counterbalance that, I’ve been trying to put more effort toward spending time with my friends and being more social – it’s hard for me because I’d rather just work on code and stay home most of the time, but I’m definitely committed to changing for the better in that regard. I need to get out there more and being a good friend to the people I know!

Motivational and Self-Help Books

Over the last month or two, I’ve read five books and I recommend them all to those who might be struggling with getting their life going, getting away from toxic attitudes, or just improving themselves:

• Unfu*k Yourself: Get Out Of Your Head and Into Your Life by Gary John Bishop
• The War of Art by Steven Pressfield
• 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey
• Unlimited Memory: How to Use Advanced Learning Strategies to Learn Faster, Remember More and Be More Productive by Kevin Horsley
• Dark Psychology Secrets & The Art of Reading People by Richard Martinez

Every day I’d just load one of these books into Audible on my phone for my commutes to and from work and school, concentrate on what was being explained… rewinding and repeating sections that I needed to focus on… and steadily I got through them. When I’m at home and I have a free moment, I open one of them up and read where the audiobook left off – or study more on the sections I didn’t completely get while listening.

Working Toward Helping Others

I’m finding that a lot of people I care about struggle one way or another. Either with launching their ideas and working toward their dreams, or finding happiness in their routines and the people around them. A lot of people hold on to the past, dwell and soak in the negative, or simply just don’t put the effort into themselves to be able to rise above what weighs them down or discourages them. I hope that as time goes on I can work to be of assistance to that, or inspiration for people that can’t find a way on their own. Fortunately, I’ve gotten to a point where I’ve come to grips with the things that have bothered me for years, and spreading the sense of freedom I’ve gained from that to help others through the dark would be amazing.

Software and Math Books I’m Working Through

Other, more career-centered, books I’ve gotten recently that I’m concentrating on include:

For learning C++:
Beginning C++17: From Novice to Professional (2018)
Mastering C++: A Step By Step Guide for the Beginner and Advanced User (2019)
Effective Modern C++: 42 Specific Ways to Improve Your Use of C++11 and C++14 (2014)
C++ Concurrency in Action: Practical Multithreading (2012)
Large Scale C++ Software Design (1996)

For getting better with C#:
Exploring Advanced Features in C# (2019)
Design Patterns in C# (2018)

For getting ready for Machine Learning and AI:
The Hundred-Page Machine Learning Book (2019)
Coding the Matrix: Linear Algebra through Computer Science Applications (2013)
Linear Algebra (2011)
Linear Algebra (1971)

Bye

For now, I’ll keep working, a little at a time, toward this greater future I envision. That work includes posting more blogs like this one, adding content to my youtube channel at https://youtube.com/c/WillForbes87 and getting my website off the ground.

So that’s where I’m at. That’s the best introduction I could give on my life right now. Thanks for reading – hit me up any time at fb.me/wforbes87 … stay tuned for more.

(Originally published 9/14/19 on https://wforbes.blogspot.com/2019/09/today-is-new-day.html )