An ambition to blog, and other new years resolutions

I feel like the cool kids would just post this straight to Facebook or create a series of increasingly opaque and metaphorical Snapchat stories.

But I’m not a cool kid. To be honest, even Medium feels like selling out. My first thought was to compose this in Blogger or LiveJournal or WordPress or Wix, but then I remembered that it’s not 1997 anymore and nobody (including me) remembers how to use RSS feeds.

Also, I really like the user interface of Medium. It makes me feel like I’m Maureen Dowd writing something profound about how Syrian refugees use technology.

Anyways. The resolutions. In 2017 I want to:

1. Improve my brain through reading. Starting with pretentious magazine articles about how Syrian refugees use technology, and then moving to old fashioned eBooks. I’m even considering paying for a digital magazine subscription, because I want to support and consume more high quality journalism so it doesn’t die off.

A colleague at work taught me a neat trick, whenever you get a book recommendation, download the sample to the Kindle App, then you have a really nice virtual bookshelf that you can flip through, without having to buy every single recommendation you get. I started doing it in late 2016, and it’s working really well for me.

2. Improve my health. I’m gonna get back into cycling to work — just as soon as I get my bike pass for the building. Currently I can run 5k without stopping and I want to do that like 3 times a week.

Last year I did a decent job tracking my food. I have a 279 day streak on MyFitnessPal, but my weight loss graph has been going up and down for the last three years. Who knew crash diets don’t work?

So in 2017 I’m going to continue trying to eat well and exercise, but I’m also going to get into weight training. More generally, my health approach will be focused on small changes that I keep to, rather than a temporary lifestyle shifts.

On the left, the person I want to be, running in NYC in the rain. On the right, my body desperately trying to make sure that on December 31st it’s as close to 90 kilos as it possibly can be.

3. Cook. Thanks to working for a company that provides an astonishing amount of free food, my cooking skills are even worst than when I left university in 2013. This year I intend to expand beyond pasta and canned tomato soup.

Although my pancakes are pretty great.

4. Improve my creativity by writing a blog entry every week. I feel like exploring the written medium will be fun, and blogging is pleasantly familiar. It has the same air of arrogance and pseudo intellectualism as vlogging used to, before the attractive people took over.

5. Slowly learn programming. Last year I did a pretty good job at getting the basics of Excel and SQL down. This time last year I couldn’t do a vlookup, a sentence past me would have punched present me for saying. I’d really like to improve my SQL skills, and also learn a proper, old fashioned programming language. I’ve heard good things about Python.

I identified a little too strongly with this scene. Also, I love that there are at least four Dalmatian references in this one frame.

6. Leave. This last one is more of a hope. I’m really hoping that in 2017 my dream of moving to California comes true. Still uncertain if I’m going to be able to pull it off this year.

Imaginary California Ali’s bicycle commute goes along a beach, rather than through ColdRainyLondon™.

xoxo — Gossip Ali