Happy Holidays once again!

It’s been a long long while since I’ve written in this blog. I did a post on my old Substack last New Years reviewing 2023 and what I had planned for 2024. I thought I would continue that tradition and evaluate how this past year has went for me and what my goals and aspirations are moving into 2025.

Overall, This has been a very eventful year for me: I graduated from college, met my new baby nephew, and I finally saved up enough money to move out on my own! This is the first time I’ve ever lived away from family and while it’s been challenging, it’s nice to finally have a place all to myself. As much as I love my parents, it was clearly time to move on.

As for employment, I’m still working in customer service and itching to get a better job. I’ve learned the hard way that simply getting a bachelor’s degree does not guarantee better work; it requires effective interviewing skills, networking, and a sturdy portfolio and/or resume. I’ve considered returning to my alma mater and finishing the bachelor of science in user experience design that I never completed; unfortunately most of the required courses in that program can only be attended face-to-face which is something I am unable to do. However, I was able to find a fully online master’s program from another university which I will apply to later this year. To be accepted, I need a portfolio of at least 3-5 pieces, so that’s something I will be working on for the next several months.

I’ve been stuck in customer service for close to two years now, and quite frankly I’m sick to death of it. It also doesn’t pay near enough to meet my long term financial goals. It’s time to move up. A master’s degree still doesn’t guarantee work, but it would increase my opportunities significantly.

Reading my last New Year’s post, I had quite a few projects and hobbies planned that I ultimately never followed through with. One of my resolutions was to blog on a regular basis. That obviously didn’t go as I hoped, although I’ve made a couple new posts since the beginning of the year. I also wanted to pursue more creative hobbies but that didn’t pan out either.

Despite this, there are a couple activities I engaged in this year that I hadn’t planned. For instance, I got the opportunity to work as a scare actor at the local haunted house in my new neighborhood. I loved Halloween when I was a kid and was obsessed with the idea of either working at or owning a haunted attraction, but my family lived in am underdeveloped rural area so I never really got the chance. Now that I live in a new town with a haunted house just across the street, I figured I would give it a go. Scare acting was a lot more challenging than I expected, but I really enjoyed it. I learned quite a bit about the business and became good friends with some fellow coworkers. I haven’t yet decided whether or not I want to act again next year though I probably will.

Another project I got involved with that I originally didn’t plan was the Farcastle project on Farcaster. Farcastle (not to be confused with Farcastles) is a project spearheaded by @earth2travis and is focused on turning Farcaster channels into DAOs. The idea for the project came about after chatting with Travis and other fellow casters about the potential channels possess to becoming fully fledged DAOs. For the most part, I’ve been assisting with user experience research, interviewing channel owners to determine what their goals and needs are. The feedback we’ve received has been very insightful and I plan to write more about our findings sometime in the near future.

In that vein, one resolution I have for this coming year is to expand my knowledge and record what I find. I’ve been involved in the web3 space for some time now, yet there’s still so much I don’t know about the technology itself and how it works. I know the fundamentals of how blockchain and cryptocurrency works, but beyond that, I know little regarding the inner workings of cryptology, artificial intelligence, ZK proofs or even traditional web technology. If I really want to work in DAOs, even if I decide not to become a developer, it would only benefit me to become more intimate with the technology that I’m actually going to work with. Knowledge is power, and the more knowledge I possess, the better I’ll be able to contribute.

To help facilitate my learning and to record what I learn, I plan to use the note taking application Obsidian. It was recommended to me by some fellow casters, primarily @thecurioushermit. Although I’ve used Notion for a while, Obsidian has better functionality, a wider selection of features and community plugins, and it’s completely private. It also has a cool graph feature that shows the connections between different notes and how they relate to each other. I’ve spent the Holidays creating an Obsidian theme in CSS and I’m quite pleased with how it looks. Getting into the habit of note taking will also help me stick with my goal of blogging regularly.

That’s about everything I have planned for the new year. This last year has been full of big changes and new experiences. If 2023 felt like a liminal space, 2024 suplexed me into the friggin backrooms. My hope for 2025 is to channel this momentum into further personal growth and improvement.

As always, If you haven’t, please consider subscribing to my Paragraph and follow me on Farcaster. Happy 2025!