{"id":736,"date":"2016-01-02T08:30:18","date_gmt":"2016-01-01T23:30:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/n8finch.com\/?p=736"},"modified":"2016-12-26T13:44:03","modified_gmt":"2016-12-26T04:44:03","slug":"looking-ahead-to-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/n8finch2024.local\/looking-ahead-to-2016\/","title":{"rendered":"Looking ahead to 2016"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Every year, we make resolutions. Some make decisions, other make mantras.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m a fan of all these things, and relish in the chance to engage in self examination and set some goals for myself.<\/p>\n<p>For 2015, my mantra and goal was to <em>&#8220;trim the fat&#8221;<\/em>. This meant a couple things:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Lose fat, not just weight, and be in better health.<\/li>\n<li>Focus on one or two things professionally.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>At the end of the year, the last three months of 2015, I lost about 27 pounds, and went from a 31% body fat count to a 21% body fat count. Not bad. I&#8217;d like to be at 12% or under. I&#8217;m adjusting my diet and workout routine to be rigorous enough to get there this year.<\/p>\n<p>I also narrowed my focus from web development and copywriting to just web development. This suits my personality better,\u00a0I enjoy it more, and it&#8217;s been the more stable work for me over the last year. I&#8217;m sure I&#8217;ll be writing more about it this year, but 2015 was a great opportunity for me to begin to stabilize as a freelance web developer.<\/p>\n<p>So, what&#8217;s in store for 2016? This is what I&#8217;ve been thinking of for the past month, but I think the new phrase for the year is: &#8220;<strong><em>Go pro, write and be generous.<\/em><\/strong>&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s how this breaks down:<!--more--><\/p>\n<h2>Go Pro<\/h2>\n<p>My goal, starting in February, is to <strong>get hired<\/strong> by a company as a either a junior developer or front-end engineer. Why get hired? Honestly, I want to get better at working with code and solving problems with code. A lot of my job currently revolves are interfacing with clients, billing, setting up and attending meetings, negotiating, etc. I&#8217;d like to cut a lot of that stuff out and spend more time on coding and problem solving. Also, i&#8217;d love the experience of working on a team, especially with people who have way more experience than I do. I could learn a lot from them. Right now, I either need to sub-contract or pay for consulting fees. And the buck stops with me on all my projects. I&#8217;d like to share more responsibility:-).<\/p>\n<p>To that end, I&#8217;m trying to <strong>develop a position and body of work<\/strong>. What does that mean? I&#8217;ve been mostly listening the last year and a half about opinions on development and the WordPress community. It&#8217;s been really good to keep my mouth shut and listen to people who have been around longer than me and know more. It&#8217;s also given me a chance to sift through some topics and people. I now have a solid group of &#8220;go-to&#8221; voices whom I respect and have become familiar with their work and thoughts. I&#8217;ve started to form my own opinions and articulate my thoughts. I want those to be represented in the work I do and the things I write.<\/p>\n<p>While it is implicit, for me, <strong>my physical health underlies my ability to work as a pro<\/strong>. If I&#8217;m not functioning well or taking care of myself, I cannot be efficient in my work or my life. So, I&#8217;m continuing to &#8220;<em>trim the fat<\/em>&#8221; this year and get in the best shape of my life. Website development can keep me seated for a long time, especially if I&#8217;m getting into a flow state. Working out and being mindful of my health promotes a better physical and mental state to work out in. I also have enjoyed looking better in my clothes and feeling good in my own skin.<\/p>\n<h2>Write<\/h2>\n<p>Two years ago, I actually <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/1YYquTo\" target=\"_blank\">wrote a workbook<\/a><\/strong> and put it on Amazon. It reflected the state of life and work I was involved in. While things have shifted dramatically for me since then, I found that writing was helpful for me to develop my thoughts as well as getting things &#8220;out there&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>So, my goal is to write 5 days a week here and other places, varying lengths of prose, recipes, thoughts, and reflections. If I miss a day, I&#8217;m not going to beat myself up, and I&#8217;m (probably) not going to try and make up the work, unless I&#8217;m writing to publish or have a deadline. I&#8217;m also going to look for opportunities to contribute and write on other blogs and news outlets.<\/p>\n<p>Not only will I be writing words, but I&#8217;ll be writing code as well. I want to <strong>write more code, daily, and push it.\u00a0<\/strong>This is the only way I&#8217;m going to get better at coding. I plan on pushing the public projects to GitHub, and any private projects, I&#8217;ll write about on my work log and push that, even though it&#8217;s not &#8220;real code&#8221;, it still counts (and it looks good on <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/n8finch\" target=\"_blank\">my GitHub<\/a><\/strong> contributions matrix!).<\/p>\n<h2>Be Generous<\/h2>\n<p>Finally, in 2016, I want myself and my wife to be more generous, professionally and personally. For me, this involves generosity in at least two areas: professional development and personal finances.<\/p>\n<p>I want to start developing some things for free. This involves developing two plugins and a theme in the month of January. My goal is to get these up on the WordPress.org repository for others to use and benefit from. Of course, this also means that I&#8217;ll be able to have that added to my list of credentials.<\/p>\n<p>Along those lines, I&#8217;ve been working through the exercises and projects on\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.freecodecamp.com\/n8finch\" target=\"_blank\">FreeCodeCamp<\/a> (you can click there to see my profile). These are all Javascript based projects, and if I get\u00a0my Front and Back End certifications through them, I can work on building projects for non-profits and work on a team of volunteers. I&#8217;m SUPER excited about this, and wish there was something similar in the WordPress space (maybe there is, or maybe there needs to be, and I&#8217;ll get that started this year). All that to say is that I would love to\u00a0help out folks in the non-profit sphere, and I&#8217;m glad there&#8217;s a way to do that which teaches Javascript in the meantime.<\/p>\n<p>Lastly, we used to give a good portion of our gross (not net) income as tithing or donating to charity and causes we believed in. 2015 was a hard year emotionally for us, and I think that made us feel a little jaded and not generous. I wonder if the best way to remedy that is to start giving again, not because it feels good, but because it\u00a0<strong><em>is<\/em><\/strong> good, and it&#8217;s who we are.<\/p>\n<p>==<\/p>\n<p>So, that&#8217;s the phrase and plan for 2016. I&#8217;ll be reviewing this post occasionally, and updating on everything soon.<\/p>\n<p>Feel free to post links to your 2016 goals, resolutions, phrases, whatever below.<\/p>\n<p>###<\/p>\n<p>Peace,<\/p>\n<p><strong>Nate<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Every year, we make resolutions. Some make decisions, other make mantras. I&#8217;m a fan of all these things, and relish in the chance to engage in self examination and set some goals for myself. For 2015, my mantra and goal was to &#8220;trim the fat&#8221;. This meant a couple things: Lose fat, not just weight, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":764,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1,10,4,8],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Looking ahead to 2016 | Nate Finch<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/n8finch-site.site.strattic.io\/looking-ahead-to-2016\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Looking ahead to 2016 | Nate Finch\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Every year, we make resolutions. Some make decisions, other make mantras. 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