End of 2015 review

The end of the year has come so now's a good time to reflect on the past year.

I've really embraced two new ideas/concepts/practices into my approach on life.

The first concept is that every day (whatever I am doing) I am contributing one programmer day's worth of work into my life's work. So whether I am highly productive in building something, or just relaxing with my wife and friends, it's all added to the big tin foil ball of my life. Will it amount to something great? profound? underwhelming? I am not sure. I can only hope and work for today's contribution to be something of significance.

Along with the idea of contributing to my life's work day-by-day, I have embraced a daily routine. It's a simple yet powerful thing. It's something that I critique, review and then follow to make my life better.

So, onto resolutions.

I started the year with one resolution, to finish everything that I start. It's hard to know if that's true, because I've surely finished some things (like my 2nd android app and some DIY home projects) but there's probably countless things that I've left undone. Since my resolution was to finish everything I start, and I'm not sure if I've actually succeeded in doing this resolution, I'll resolve to keep on trying to finish everything I start for 2016 as well. Sounds like I'm in a bit of an infinite loop, but oh well.
Update I just signed up for a coursera course and plan on signing up for another one right after. By the time they are over, half of the year will be gone. I've started and never finished a few of these online courses before, so I resolve to finish at least these two this year.

A second resolution that I'd like to make for myself is to improve my personality. As a science major/engineer/software developer I think I gave myself the excuse that I was good enough socially for an engineer. But as I reflect on the year, I think I've let myself go too much, and that I should work towards being better socially. Similar to physical and mental health, it's not a good idea to not care about my social health at all. I think it will take some effort and uncomfortable-ness, but I hope it will make me a more enjoyable person and help to ground me in stronger relationships as well.

I have a lot of other things that I'd like to improve on (foreign languages, health, computer science skills), but I've already been working on those, so I don't think a new resolution is necessary, but those are still under active development as well.