I want to focus on achieving three primary goals in 2025:

1. Improve Communication Skills (i.e. speaking)
2. Rails - Build more applications
3. Fitness - Get Moving

Improve Communication Skills

I want to focus on verbal communication skills. To accomplish this goal, I am going to start building more in public, record videos of myself talking on an array of subject matters (maybe programming, spreadsheets, or other doing things I enjoy).

The goal is to take action on something I learned and share it with the public.

You may see evidence of this goal taking shape with this blog’s activity increasing sharply since November 2024’s post on neovim.

Rails - Build more applications

Over 2023 and 2024 I have been building the foundational skills of Rails. To be honest, learning Rails took a lot longer than I thought it would. I believe I figured out the most challenging aspect of Rails, which is the Active Record or database modeling. It took a lot of time for me to learn to model data and assemble all the Model-View-Controller pieces together, and get it all aligned in my minds eye. I feel that a lot of the material I learned downplayed the Rails modeling and data except for a few resources that pointed to this fact.

I also still have decent java programming skills from many years ago that I may want to leverage again as well for a few projects too.

Fitness - Get Moving

Over the past few years, well I guess since COVID-19 outbreak, I stopped doing fitness. I stopped yoga. I tried to get back into running, but it never seems to stick.

This year I want to focus my energy on active sports. For example, something like tennis or swimming, i.e. something enjoyable that I can look forward too. That’s where I think I am going wrong. I need something more playful that will elevate my heart rate without me having to dread the activity.

I am also going to setup weights in the basement (a few dumbbells), so I can lift small amounts consistently each day instead of trying to have an intense workout at the gym 3 times a week.

Cover Image Credit¹