Accountable in 2023

I decided to give something a try. Something new. I have so many interests and do so many things that it is hard to keep track of them all, and keep myself accountable. So here this is, and it happens to align with the start of a new year. So Happy New Year!

Let’s do a quick retrospective on 2022, before I dive into what I aim to accomplish in 2023. I’m just gonna hit the big moments here, and I think I won’t give much of an order to these things, but instead will hit upon my personal and professional achievements alike.

I visited Mexico City, and documented that trip elsewhere. Maybe one day it’ll make its way onto here, because that experience was pretty wild. I also went to Hawaii, twice, and Washington, twice. I’ve now also been into Canada. I’ve seen my daughter more than I ever have outside of the first year of her life. I took a VFX course and gained the ability to create VFX, composite, sculpt and model, and more, albeit at a basic level. I have an understanding of the process to the point where I believe I can find the right track to do whatever it is I can think up (on a small scale but growing larger everyday because--). I’ve also begun to dig into animation and have put together a workflow (similar to VFX) that allows me to animate many things many different ways, and I’m excited to see how that will expand in the new year. I also started to dig into Python, having learned Java and some C++ a little over a decade ago. It’s been coming together nicely, even though it is pretty dang ambitious. Also, I dropped out of college (again) early in 2022 to handle the responsibilities of a salaried position with a Metaverse company that’s just gone public on the NASDAQ. Being part of a Metaverse company has forced me to really delve deep into research, technology, and content creation in a way I never have before, and I’ve definitely made it a goal to accumulate as much knowledge on the subject, and any adjacent or neighboring concepts, verticals, ideals, visions, technologies, and uses as I can, and more appear everyday, from ChatGPT to readily-available bluetooth sensors to digital twins to nuclear fusion and a million other things that really don’t seem to connect but do.

Next year, I’m going to keep pushing. I’ll do much that aligns with my Metaverse position, much that aligns with my personal and professional objectives, and much that aligns with who I want to be. Some of that is spiritual, as I want to deepen my relationship with that aspect of existence (in fact, I’ll follow this up with another blog post I’ve been thinking on). I want to learn Japanese and have already taken steps in that direction with the app Fluent Forever. I’ll probably end up letting anyone reading this know how that goes. This is in preparation for a trip to Japan that is planned for the second quarter of 2023. I want to continue with Python, because I believe it will help me communicate and leverage the power of AI. It can’t hurt as far as I’m concerned. I want to create more content and connect with people over my work and my progress, and that looks like videos (short films, skits, trailers, sizzles), a podcast (talking about scripts I’ve written and how they came about while having animated AI voices perform an excerpt of each), a newsletter (just keeping folks up to date and sharing my work), and this blog (to give updates on the in-betweens). I want to find a few weeks out of the year to shoot another movie. Also, I want to finish the dystopian sci-fi novel I’m working on (which is 100+ pages deep) and create a sci-fi fantasy novella that I can turn into an audiobook (I’m leapfrogging the current novel to write this one). It’s really all so much, but simultaneously, it isn’t. I also want to do better with my money, and prioritize the stuff that makes sense. I have a way of finishing a lot of stuff and going nowhere. What it tends to feel like is walking in a spiral, where I don’t thrust too far outwards at any one point but stay near to the center. Or better yet, I hold a lantern in the darkness, and instead of walking in one direction, I just make bigger concentric circles. I guess to me, life is a bit like a game of discovery. But at this point, I believe that maybe it could be time to share what I’ve seen, what my lantern has alighted upon in the hopes that we can better connect--I can better connect the paths I’ve made with the paths that others make.

It’s kind of a big year ahead. So maybe this will help keep me on track and effective in my pursuits.