Let's talk about the Year of Done

02 Dec 2024

So things obviously went somewhat awry in October. I failed to continue writing blog posts, and while I did keep on making weekly goals and, for the most part, meeting them, I ran into the issue of scope creeping upwards yet again, and put a lot of that effort down to the final weekend. And so it didn’t work out.

This was…. upsetting? Discouraging? Not sure what the word is, but it sure made me feel like shit overall. Going into November, I set an initial goal to finish the book I’ve been reading, but it shifted a few days in to be a pushups challenge where I do 5 pushups per day, cumulatively and non-consecutively, until I do 150 pushups on November 30th. On the 24th I pulled something in my shoulder while trying to do 120. Which certainly put a damper on my abilities. But I did make some pretty steady progress, in terms of pushing how many I can do at a time up. Which is nice! It feels good to accomplish things! Which is the entire point of the Year of Done anyway.

I’m gonna be honest, I wanted to quit. I still kinda do feel like I tried to establish that I can do things and then failed, pretty drastically. But I’ve also had a specific target for December, so I’m gonna at the very least do this month. I want to partake in the advent of code. I’ve dabbled in the past, getting 16 stars in 2019 and 8 in 2022. But this year, I’m going for all 50. Not only that, I want to do it while learning a new language: Go. I was torn between Go and Rust, but on the whole I see Rust bragged about for speed, and I see Go… actually being used in programs I run when I’m self hosting. So I made that choice. Maybe I do Rust in 2025.

Not only that, I plan on doing write-ups explaining my thought process all throughout the challenge, explaining how my code works, the parts I’m happy with, what I’m less happy with, potential optimizations, etc. So let’s get to it!