What's new in 2025
It's already the twelfth of January and I'm only now writing the first blog entry for 2025. And actually I don't have a specific topic, so I'll just write down how I've been doing so far.
Journaling
I was really excited to inaugurate my new journal, including my new system. It didn't go quite as I had hoped and I didn't have as much fun as I had expected at first. After a small change of plan, this was resolved and now everything is fine. But I'll write more about that in detail in a separate entry.
Retraining
Retraining has started again and I'm suffering a bit because we now have to deal with business studies (economics etc.). There have already been several maths problems that have almost driven me to despair, because I have big difficulties with maths problems that are not a big challenge for many others. What's more, the current coach has a penchant for giving us group work. I wouldn't mind that in itself if it wasn't always followed by a presentation. Presentations aren't my thing either and are quite stressful for me. I was able to avoid one of them because I had a job interview at a company in the same building.
I think I've already mentioned it somewhere, but we need to start securing our internships now. Last year I already had an interview for an internship in Mobile Development. That went well and I'm waiting for an appointment for a second interview, at which the two managing directors will also be present. The last interview at another company also went well, even better, according to my gut feeling. The company is in the same building as my retrainig and it does pretty much everything (IT-related): from IT security to software development, mobile, web and so on. I'm interested in front-end web development. Here, too, I'll have to wait and see. I have competition from classmates at both companies. We'll find out what happens. I really hope that one of them works out (I prefer one option over the other). I'm tired of applying and don't want to have to write any more cover letters or go to interviews.
Read more
I've resolved to try and read more books - regardless of the new year. Nothing too ambitious, because I know myself. My ambition is to read more books than usual, which means more than zero. Not that I've never read a book before, but the last one was a while ago. My second ambition is to read the books I still have lying around and have never started. No time frame, because pressure won't help me. Just try to read a little bit every day if possible, or every two or three days if it doesn't work out more often.
The first book I set myself was almost halfway through and it's not thick. When we had Git as a topic in the retraining programme, I bought a kind of guide and started reading it. But then the topic was no longer so relevant, I had to study for other topics etc. and so I neglected it for a while. But now I've started it again and finally finished it last night.
The next book on the agenda is from the Witcher series, namely "The Tower of Swallows ’. Unbelievable but true, I've already read the predecessors, albeit very slowly. This activity is also planned for the tram journeys as well as for evenings, just a few minutes before sleep are possible. If I want to cycle again in the future (with more light and a little less cold) instead of travelling by tram, reading time will of course be lost. Difficult.
Draw more
I haven't explicitly planned to do this, but I've been drawing more again recently. Mainly on my days off, but admittedly also a bit during lessons. That's not so good. And as my free time is pretty limited at the moment, I'm not committing myself to wanting to draw more.
Play more
Well, not quite. My wife and I have started playing Animal Crossing again, we're making a bit of free time in the evenings for that purpose. But if I'm reading, studying or blogging on the train, I can't play Pokémon. Well, it's difficult and priorities have to be set. I wanted to upload a screenshot from Animal Crossing, but it turned out to be complicated (although I didn't have any problems before). The QR code doesn't do what it's supposed to and I've given up for now. Maybe next time.
Less programming?
Oh, that's tricky. We now have four months in a row of topics in the retraining programme where we don't have to or can't write any code at all. I'm already realising that I have to study for the current topics at home and I'm afraid that after these four months I'll have more or less forgotten everything I've learned so far in the programming area! You actually have to keep writing code to internalise the whole thing and remember it, but when is that supposed to happen?
So as you can see, I've been very busy and somehow haven't kept any time free for blogging. During the lunch break I go for a walk with my seatmate so that we can get some exercise, so there's no time for other interests. It will probably remain a juggling act of interests and duties for a while.
Music: Storm - Thomas Barrandon
Mood: relaxed