My Composing Challenge for 2023

Hello to future me and other readers!

The new year is underway and as a sophomore in college now, I am trying my best to “get my shit together”. That being said, I have committed myself to a few goals for the year that I want to achieve and will list them below.

As for this Medium account, my main goal is to help document my progress surrounding my composition goal as well as other goals, so I can look back at the end of the year and marvel at the leaps and bounds and also, the inevitable struggles. Also, of course, I hope that you, the reader, will maybe perhaps learn something too!

Furthermore, I will be writing weekly progress articles that hopefully aren’t too laborious to read and longer monthly articles documenting a more detailed look at my progression.

1. Compose music for 1 hour a day on Logic Pro X. By the end of the year, have 3 portfolio-ready music pieces. (Work towards my goal of eventually becoming a full-time film composer)
2. Land a CS Internship for Summer 2023 by spring break. (Enhance my software engineering and problem-solving skills professionally and earn some MONEY)
3. Run a marathon in December 2023. (Improve my fitness and see how far I can push my mental strength)

These three goals are the backbone of the rest of my goals in 2023 and I hope that by building habits to reach these goals, those habits will enhance other parts of my life.

Now, in order to reach these goals, I need to have a plan of action. Having just talked with a friend over dinner about achieving goals, I think my plan is to approach these goals slowly. Right now, I am not the most motivated and I think that if I immediately jump into these goals, I will burn out quickly. So, I believe a key to hitting these goals is to build up good habits slowly and steadily as opposed to taking long strides. For example, my plan for composition is to start out by just opening Logic Pro X every day, then eventually start composing for 20 min., then 30 min., then an hour every day. I hope that through slow and steady progress, I will be able to conquer each and every one of these goals.

Before I end this introduction article off, I want to touch on one last topic. Why am I doing this? Why am I writing my goals publicly when I could keep them to myself?

For one, I want to keep a record of my progress throughout the year, and I think that writing weekly/monthly entries is a good way to document and keep up with my progress. But, primarily, I want to write on Medium because it gives you guys, the readers, a way to hold me accountable when my motivation starts to slip as well as join me on my journey!

So yea! That’s about it for the introduction. My name is Ryan Zheng and these are my three goals for 2023. Nice to meet you and let’s do this!

If you want to reach out to me for any reason whatsoever, feel free to email ryanz3@illinois.edu. Have a good one!