Unlike my previous New Year’s Resolutions posts, which have been more of a mere mockery of the entire concept. I must say, this time around is much more serious. Given that 2023 was such a transcendental year to me, I’m taking 2024 as the follow up to leap ahead and continue what was such a massive year. Generally speaking, my 2024 goals can be classified under two categories: Professional and Personal.

Professional
My professional goals have always been the easiest for me to accomplish. I’ve never had a problem learning or mastering anything that requires my sole focused. So this is an area where I always excellence. Thus said, this year my goal is to live, eat, and breath Kubernetes. Since I already have both the Certified Kubernetes Application Developer and Certified Kubernetes Administrator credentials, I’m going to make the goal of obtaining both the Kubernetes and Cloud Security Associate and Certified Kubernetes Security Specialist credentials.

Personal: Health and Fitness
This is regarding my professional goals, my personal goals is a complete different monster. To start, 2023 was a fantastic year fitness and health wise. As I’m able to easily run over 7 miles at a decent speed without having to take any short breaks. So my goal is try to run half-marathon lengths at the fastest times possible. Also more importantly, given that I’m finally looking to get a decent body shape, my goal to 2024 is to get absolutely shredded, as I’m finally start to enjoy weight lifting and not just cardio which is what I’ve traditional loved to do.

Personal: Creative
Given the unique circumstances around the different events that happened to 2023, mostly bad. These bad events in 2023 somehow in a weird way, inspired to write a lot. I managed to write a fantasy story that’s over 45,000 words! And the amazing thing is that I was able to do so mostly in Spanish. Given that the story is part of a much larger project that I’ve been working for almost 8 year now, so the current 45,000 word draft is just a mere beginning, also given that I have other short stories (1,000-5,000 words), my writing project is finally starting to look like an actual novel (at least in length and on the outline). So my goal is write another 50k word story for my project.

Another creative activity that I want to start, or continue to be more exact. Is that I want to return to doing some drawing. During the COVID lockdowns, I did quite a bit of drawing (mostly Hispanic related coat of arms), and I even went as far as buying a full set of color pencils and markers to continue this hobby, but I slacked off and put it aside. So this year, I’m hoping to return to draw more.

Personal: New Hobbies and Experiences
2023 was somewhat of a good year regarding starting picking up new hobbies and having new experiences. Most noticeably going to beach every weekend, just after dawn and just sit down in the sand and meditate to the beautiful sound of the ocean. This new experience alone was such a massive stress and anxiety reliever, that I’m hoping to start new similar experiences like this on the new year.

Personal: Offline
My final goal for 2024 is to be offline as much as possible, or to be off my phone to be more exact. While social is nice, to me this usually means just wasting my time or even worse wasting my energy on something that should not require any of my attention. So for this year, my goal is be off my phone as much as possible.